


Fire to the Bed I've Made

by Helholden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ASOS Spoilers, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blackwater AU, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, Parenthood, War, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 12:45:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandor Clegane did not desert at the Battle of Blackwater. King Joffrey and King Robb are both dead. Tywin Lannister rules the Seven Kingdoms through his grandson, Tommen, and his son Tyrion Lannister is Lord of Winterfell via marriage to Sansa Stark. In the wake of the War of the Five Kings, the Ironborn unleash their fury upon the North. As Sandor serves Lord Tyrion in Winterfell, he develops a complicated relationship with his lord’s wife, the Lady Sansa, as well as the ironborn prisoner, Lady Asha Greyjoy. When the Lannister twins visit their brother, plots and hardships arise for all. Swords and lives connect and clash, and through the wreckage comes a new dawn for those with the will to survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Necessary Fiction

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve made the first ever Sandor Clegane/Asha Greyjoy tag on A03 with this story. How has no one written this before? I bet it’s out there on other sites, but I digress. This takes place on an alternate timeline starting with _A Clash of Kings_. All of the characters have grown differently and made alternate life decisions in this story, which takes place a year after Tyrion and Sansa’s wedding in book three, _A Storm of Swords_ , so they act differently as a result of those choices. Sandor, not deserting, still serves the Lannisters despite not liking any of them. Jaime, escaping imprisonment and never meeting Brienne, is still pre-redemption Jaime. As a result, Jaime is still a fairly nasty and unlikeable person who serves Cersei. Hopefully, this explanation will shed light on the characters’ decisions in this story.

 

Cersei’s green eyes were livid with fire, burning like the Blackwater during the battle Tywin Lannister so narrowly helped them all escape with their hides still intact. She ought to be grateful for that, he thought, but no, gratefulness did not become his daughter. If Tywin didn’t know any better, he would have said her very soul was made of wildfire. She would have been born to decimate cities, but she was born a woman instead of a man, and so she turned her ferocity onto the sterner sex and instead sated her hunger by ruining the lives of men.

 

Tywin would appreciate it if her actions didn’t nearly cause their family to lose everything.

 

“You’re giving him _Winterfell_?” Cersei spat in disbelief, her voice rising with each word from her lips. “After he killed your eldest _grandson_!”

 

“You have no proof,” Tywin said. He was calm but also firm, and he put down his pen to grab a small container of fine powder. Over the freshly written ink of his new letter, he dusted a thin layer of powder to help it set. Tywin gave his daughter a steely gaze from across his desk, one that he dared her to reject.

 

When she said nothing in response, he continued.

 

“I believe the Tyrells are responsible,” Tywin revealed. “Lady Olenna is not called the Queen of Thorns for nothing. Blaming your brother gets you nowhere. You may hate him all you like, but I will not let a Lannister take the fall for both kingslaying _and_ kinslaying in the same night. Our House will never be able to escape it. Ruling with fear is within our power, but we need respect if we are to hold that fear. Try Tyrion for Joffrey’s murder, and watch how fast the crows come to descend on our family. We will all be dead before the year is out.”

 

Once the letter was set, he poured dark wax and stamped it with the seal of the Hand of the King. Cersei was quiet for once in her life. All she did as a youth was complain about how she wanted to be like her brother, Jaime. Tywin expected she would grow out of it, but now that she was older it was worse. Cersei spent every living moment of her life bemoaning her duties as a woman of House Lannister until Tywin could no longer bear to hear another second of it.

 

He thought to marry her to Oberyn Martell in hopes the Dornishman could tame the fire in her or, at the very least, burn it straight out of her.

 

“Yet now you plot to marry Tommen to Margery as well,” Cersei accused, and she shook with a mother’s fear. “Are both my sons to die of poisoning before you crown _yourself_ king?”

 

She would come to regret those words. Tywin would make sure of it. His next letter would be to Dorne. Hopefully, Cersei would enjoy her new home in the viper’s nest.

 

It would teach her some well needed humility.

 

“Tyrion will be Lord of Winterfell,” Tywin said with cold finality. “Tommen will sit the Iron Throne. You will go to Dorne and marry Oberyn Martell. Jaime will be Warden of the West as well as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. I will have a Lannister in all four corners of the Seven Kingdoms. Do I make myself clear?”

 

Cersei was shaking with anger. She mustered up the courage to spit on his desk. Tywin looked down at it. Very calmly, he picked up a loose cloth and cleaned up the mess.

 

“Now leave,” Tywin said, discarding the cloth to his left. “Before I change my mind and marry you to Ser Gregor Clegane.”

 

He would never marry a daughter of his so low, but he said it for the implication of pain if she disobeyed him one more time, not for the truth. Cersei received the message plain enough, and she stood up quickly from her seat. Tywin gazed over his letter as she stalked off towards the door, and out of the corner of his eyes, he saw her long red skirts swaying behind her steps.

 

“Oh,” Tywin called out to his daughter. “There is one more thing.”

 

Cersei paused in the doorway and said nothing, but she turned her head halfway to show that she was listening to him without giving him any special acknowledgment.

 

“I want Sandor Clegane to accompany Tyrion to Winterfell. He will be of use to me should Tyrion forget his place.”

 

Cersei whirled around, her skirts flowing with her. “He is _mine_ ,” she hissed. “He has served my son, Joffrey, since he was bo—”

 

“Is he your lover as well?” Tywin asked, and Cersei’s face reddened in either anger or shame. Tywin could not tell which one. At this point, he would not be surprised if what he said was true. It was only said to embarrass her, but he was coming to find his daughter housed foul secrets and scandals left and right. “Close your legs before people start calling you a whore,” he advised her. “The Cleganes serve me. They do as I say. He goes North. With Tyrion.”

 

She did not even bother to have another argument with him. With his declaration, Cersei stormed out.

 

Tywin glanced down at his letters. He had a lot of work to do.


	2. I've Got No Need For You

 

When Sandor Clegane first met Asha Greyjoy, she was hacking through his men’s limbs and bellies like they were tree stumps in the way of her gardening, her axe whirling in one hand, her dirk flashing in the other. She sliced through one man’s throat as she gutted another, and five more came rushing at her. Blood sprayed across her face, and she screamed with her thirst of it.

 

She chopped the last one down, her blood-matted dark hair in disarray, and Sandor growled a halting command at the rest of his men as they prepared to attack anew.

 

“ _Stop_!” he bellowed, and silence fell upon them as they stilled their swords. Asha Greyjoy breathed heavily, her head bent, her eyes watching each and every one of them like they were snakes in the grass waiting to pounce. “This one’s mine,” Clegane pronounced, and the sea of legs and limbs parted to let him pass.

 

She was surrounded in dead bodies, the bodies of her men and his lord’s men. Hacked, mutilated corpses fresh for the crows. The stench was overwhelming. They had been fighting for days. She held Deepwood Motte for as long as she dared, but Clegane broke through the barrier and chased her into the woods where he and his men cornered her and hers.

 

“Raise your axe, bitch,” Sandor spat. “Let’s see what you have got.” His steel twisted in his hand, glinting in the light.

 

“Is that all?” she said, slowly circling him. “’Bitch’? It’s a good one, coming from a _dog_.”

 

“Ah, maybe I’ll fuck you then,” Sandor said, “but I’d rather cut off your head.”

 

“I’ll be sure to cut off your balls,” Asha replied, and her axe lifted suddenly and came down at him.

 

Sandor raised his sword, blocking the blow, and used his upper body to shove at her. Asha stumbled back, but she made a quick recovery. What she lacked in strength, she made up for in speed and endurance. She swung her axe in an arc and caught it on his armor, but it left no defining mark outside of a dent where it grazed him. Sandor slashed his blade down at her. Asha dodged it by falling back, but his sword slipped against her axe and took one of her fingers with it.

 

Asha didn’t cry out. She swore instead, but before she could check her hand, Sandor sent another blow at her. She blocked it with the handle of her axe and slashed at him with her dirk, but his sword was stronger than her weapon’s hilt. The wood split in two and broke, her axe giving way and bringing his sword down on her. Asha fell back, hitting the muddy ground at her feet. The fall saved her life.

 

Sticking out her leg, she tripped Clegane. He was a big man, so he fell hard. With her axe of no more use, she threw it aside and crawled onto him with her dirk. Asha stabbed downwards at him, but Sandor grabbed her wrist and twisted her hand. Asha bit back a yell of pain, and the dirk fell out of her hand. Sandor raised his head and smashed his forehead against hers.

 

He got up from the mud as she lay still on the ground. Asha tried to raise herself, but Sandor put his boot down on her back and held her there in the mud. “Looks like the bitch needs a bath!” he called out to his men, and they all laughed.

 

Asha eyed her fallen dirk. She snatched it and twisted around beneath his boot, stabbing him in the leg. Sandor hollered out, half in anger and half in pain, and then he kicked her hard in the face. Asha flew back onto the mud, blood pouring from her broken nose. Her eyes were glazed, and his leg was bleeding like a stuck pig.

 

Sandor pulled the dirk out of his leg, gritting his teeth. The blade dripped ruby red drops to the mud below. He flung it aside, stumbling away from her.

 

“Pick the bitch up!” he ordered his men. “Chain her up and bind her, and don’t fucking touch her! She’s the daughter of a lord. If any one of you whoresons spoils her, I’ll cut your dick off myself and shove it in your mouth before sending your head back to her father.”

 

Clegane limped his way back his courser. He ripped up a piece of cloth and tied it around the gash in his leg. It would stave off the bleeding until he could better tend to it once they were back in Winterfell. He wanted to return as soon as possible. Clegane had no desire to stay here in the woods outside of Deepwood Motte or within its haunted, dark walls.

 

“Back to Winterfell, you scum!” he hollered, and they began the march back to the city that was their home now.

 

No longer in King’s Landing, Sandor had been sent North with Lord Tyrion and his new lady wife, the innocent maid Sansa Stark. That alone had been enough to almost fuel Sandor to cut off the Imp’s head once and for all, but Lord Tywin came to Sandor personally to discuss his departure with his son. It had been an interesting conversation, to say the least.

 

“Should my son prove unruly or disloyal,” Lord Tywin had said, “I will call upon you, Clegane, to set matters right.” The lord’s eyes were as cold as a cruel winter’s wind. “I hope we have an understanding,” he said without batting an eye, and Sandor understood perfectly.

 

To know it was his job to off the little bugger if it came down to it was enough to make Sandor agree without complaint. Besides, it wasn’t his place to question lords, especially not the head of the family his house served since before he was born. Lords made the choices around here, and the little people just had to follow them.

 

The journey back to Winterfell took more than a few days, but distance and snow had them at a disadvantage. As they approached the seat of the North, its gates opened up for them and allowed the Lannister soldiers pass. It was a striking change for the North. Instead of the banner of the Starks floating atop the parapets, it was the banner of House Lannister: a golden lion on a field of red, raging through the skies, and not a wolf in sight.

 

Sandor dismounted his horse and immediately sought out Lord Tyrion. They were in the middle of supper in the Great Hall when he stormed in, a group of men behind him carrying the prisoner, Asha Greyjoy, in chains to the doorstep of Lord Tyrion. Tyrion looked up from his meal with beady eyes, one black and one green, and frowned at the sight before him. “What’s this?” he asked.

 

“This is our prisoner,” Clegane announced. “Lady Asha Greyjoy, Balon’s daughter.”

 

“Ah,” Tyrion said. “The one and only. I take it Deepwood Motte is ours again?”

 

“Yes,” Clegane answered him. “We killed most of them. Captured a few of value, including this one.”

 

“She looks rather roughed up,” Tyrion said. He set his mouth in a firm line, glancing over at Sansa. The lady looked horrified, but some part of her could not look away from the sight of Asha’s broken and blood-crusted nose. “My lady, you may leave if the sight disturbs you.”

 

Sansa swallowed past a catch in her throat. She slowly removed her gaze from Asha Greyjoy, turning it to Tyrion. “No, my lord. I will stay, if it please you.”

 

“You’ll look that way when you fight in battles,” Clegane cut in. He didn’t like the implication that he would rough up a lady for the hell of it. “This woman likes to fight battles instead of staying at home and sewing like some sensible young ladies. When you pick up an axe and swing, best get used to people swinging things back at you.”

 

The thin line of Tyrion’s mouth loosened up. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course, Clegane. You are right. I see you have not escaped unscathed from your battle—” He gestured at the knot of cloth tied around Sandor’s leg.

 

“No, she got me in the leg,” Clegane said. “With a dirk.”

 

Tyrion clapped his hands. “Well done, Lady Greyjoy,” he congratulated her. “It’s probably the first time in a while someone has gotten a hit on the Hound.”

 

The burnt side of Sandor’s mouth twitched. He didn’t like being called the Hound anymore, but nobody seemed to get that through their thick skulls. Was it so hard to call someone by their given name, instead of a beastly moniker?

 

“Why isn’t she responding?” Lord Tyrion asked the men, surprised by Lady Asha’s silence.

 

“She’s out cold, my lord,” one of the men behind Sandor admitted. “I think it’s the blood loss. She lost one of her fingers . . . ”

 

“Well, someone get her to the dungeon and see to her wounds!” Tyrion exclaimed, angry all of a sudden. “Immediately, now!”

 

“Yes, my lord!” several of the men answered all at once, a ringing chorus of jackasses, and they removed the unconscious Lady Asha from the Great Hall. Sandor remained where he stood, his eyes boring into the Imp.

 

“My lord,” Clegane ground out. It was hard calling the Imp such an honorific title. The little monster didn’t deserve it in Sandor’s eyes.

 

“Yes, Clegane?”

 

“More ironborn will come,” Clegane said. “They’re not through with us yet.”

 

“I don’t believe they are,” Tyrion agreed. “We will talk more in the morning. I am sure we will also find out much valuable information from our new prisoner, thanks to you. Well done, Clegane.”

 

Clegane’s jaw drew tight. With a stiff nod of his head, he turned around and strode out of the Great Hall. He visited the maester’s tower to get his cut seen about. It was deeper than a cut, a gash straight through his leg, but Sandor never thought of wounds with much severity. The only thing he truly feared was fire and the burns that came afterwards. A dirk was no fire, and Sandor barely paid any mind to it.

 

Once his cut was washed, disinfected, and wrapped in a tight poultice, he left the maester’s tower and followed the path through the castle to his own private chambers. It was already dark outside by now, the sky a cloak of blackness hanging overhead with not a single speck of light from star nor moon to light the way. Though he was a big man, he walked through the dark like a shadow unseen.

 

Sandor reached his personal chambers and shut the door behind him, barring it. He barred it every night, though he couldn’t say why. These were dangerous times, and he was a dangerous man. Dangerous men often attracted unwanted enemies. He shucked off his gear, walked over to the brazier, and lit a small fire. Its light filled the room slowly, painting dark shadows across the walls and ceiling.

 

When he turned around and saw the figure on his bed, he quickly grabbed the fire poker and brandished it like a sword.

 

The figure held up a small and slender hand, rising from the bed. Pulling back its dark blue hood, the intruder revealed herself as a woman with fiery auburn hair and bright blue eyes. It was more likely for an assassin to be in his room than the Lady Sansa Stark, but here she was as plain as day before him. Her name was Lannister now, but he could never bring himself to call the little bird one of them.

 

His shock was apparent to her. She looked at the fire poker and gestured for him to lower it. “Please,” she said. “I mean you no harm.”

 

Sandor did not lower the poker. “Why are you here?”

 

“I need your help,” Lady Sansa said, her voice trembling as she admitted it. “Please, I do not know who else to turn to. I have no one anymore, and there is no one who I can trust. I cannot stay here, but I cannot leave on my own. I need help, and you were kind to me in King’s Landing . . . ” She approached him cautiously, reaching out her hand. Sansa placed it on his knuckles—right above his grip on the fire poker. “Please, will you help me?”

 

Sandor remembered the innocent little girl from King’s Landing, but this Sansa had been Tyrion’s wife for a year now. She might be an innocent babe still, or she might be doing this to help weed out traitors, whether it was of her own free will or not.

 

“No,” he said immediately, placing the fire poker back against the wall. “Now get out.”

 

Lady Sansa looked like she was about to argue with him or plead with him, but she took him by surprise with her next gesture. She closed the distance between them, carefully taking his hand into hers. Her eyes were downcast on the floor, unable to meet his face. “I could . . . ” The words stuck in her throat. “I could do . . . favors for you if . . . if that’s what you want . . . ”

 

To hear those words out of her once pure mouth startled him more than anything. Sandor pulled his hand away from her, glaring all the while. “I don’t want the Imp’s leftovers,” he said harshly.

 

He expected her to flinch at that and run away crying, but Lady Sansa raised her head and glared at him with as much force as she could muster behind her gentle face. Her eyes, though blue as calm seas, shone with ire. “I am no man’s leftovers,” she said, and somewhere in that innocent voice was the haughty tone of a highborn woman. “Lord Tyrion has not . . . he has not touched me since we wed. That is why we have no children. He said he will not touch me unless I want him to.”

 

Judging by the look in her eyes, she was telling the truth, but Sandor wasn’t giving in to her that easily. “You expect me to believe that? A pretty little thing like you in his bed for a year, and he’s never touched you?”

 

Lady Sansa’s eyes were steel. “Never,” she said. She almost seemed insulted that he believed otherwise.

 

Sandor’s silence must have seemed to her like he was considering it. She reached out for his hand again, grew bold, and drew herself closer to him until there was barely an inch or two between them. He felt her thumb stroke a gentle circle over his hand. “Is that what you want of me?” Lady Sansa asked him under her breath, and she was close enough for him to kiss her. She smelled like flowers and mint cloves.

 

Sandor decided he might as well steal a kiss, and so he did—grasping the back of her head, he pulled her to him and kissed her hard. If the shocked little noise she made in her throat was anything to go by, she wasn’t expecting it. She was still against him, rigid as a board, and then she softened up and opened her mouth.

 

He pushed her away. Sandor made sure to look her in the eyes when he next spoke. He didn’t want his point lost on her, so she’d better get it quick.

 

“Get out,” he said, and her horrified expression spoke volumes, but she never protested even once. Lady Sansa closed her mouth tightly, shaking where she stood, and hurried to his door. She unbarred it with fumbling fingers. Once she got the door open, she didn’t even bother to close it before she vanished down the hallway.

 

Sandor walked up to his door and looked out down the hall. He saw her cloak disappear around the corner in the light of a low burning torch. He supposed he should feel guilty, and he did, but only a little bit. The little bird was going to have to learn her lesson sooner or later. It was best she learned now before it was too late. She couldn’t just go around asking men to help her escape her captors. Somebody was bound to get a head lopped off, and it wasn’t going to be him.

 

He shut his door and barred it again, but his room was empty this time and somehow the warmth from the fire had all seeped out of the door when she opened it. At least that was what he told himself. Sandor went to bed alone as usual, and in the blackness of his chamber that night, he dreamed of Sansa Stark.


	3. And the Lady Dances

 

Hundreds of lanterns glittered across the ceiling, hanging on iron hooks and trussed from one side of the Great Hall to the other with rope. Whenever the doors were opened and someone entered or left the feasting chamber, a gust of wind sent the lanterns spinning, and it painted brilliant shocks of light across the walls. Brown and green tapestries were strung up as well, and it made the Great Hall look like a forest in the middle of summer. Heat radiated through the hall from various braziers to the point that many men removed their cloaks and women were fanning themselves because of their heavy gowns.

 

The only one unaffected was the lady of the house, Lady Sansa, and she looked the part of a princess in her deep blue gown and radiant sapphires. She stole the center of the floor with her dancing partner, a tall man dressed in the white cloak and armor of the Kingsguard, his head a crown of golden hair. The kingslayer himself, Jaime Lannister, and he danced with as much grace as Lady Sansa. The women were fanning themselves over him as well.

 

Sandor watched the whole thing with a bitter taste at the back of his mouth. Jaime was only visiting, come to see his brother, which he did very often. Often enough that people talked about it in hushed whispers like it was a secret or a scandal, but Jaime was all smiles and laughter whenever he paid his visits. Even now, as the Kingslayer circled Lady Sansa, gazing at her with the likeness of a lion hunting its prey, his lips held the barely noticeable curve of a smirk at the corner. It made the corner of Sandor’s mouth twitch.

 

When the dance was over, the whole Great Hall erupted in clapping. Jaime Lannister and Lady Sansa bowed and curtsied respectively, gently holding hands as they did so. Sansa was not all smiles as one might expect. She had the look of winter in her face and the conduct to match it, withdrawing from Jaime without even looking at him.

 

“That was beautiful,” Tyrion told them, and he came between the two dancers to take his wife by the hand. “If only I had the grace of your feet, Jaime, and it might be me dancing with my wife.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure you have the grace where it counts,” Jaime said, smirking at his own joke. Sansa’s face flushed red, and Tyrion’s face wrinkled in displeasure at the remark.

 

“Come, my lady,” Tyrion said, leading Lady Sansa back to the high table. “I am sure you are famished after dancing with my brother . . . ”

 

Sandor turned away from the conversation and vanished into the crowd. He sought out one of the many tables piled with food and refreshments and settled on a tankard of Dornish red. He downed it all too fast, refilled the tankard, and left the Great Hall to wander the corridor beyond it. Dancing and merrymaking didn’t become him, and he scorned at all of it. It was a show, a show for the victory in the North, but the victory was his and no one was raising any toasts to him.

 

He enjoyed the silence with his heady wine, occasionally interrupted by the laughing and stumbling of guests leaving the Great Hall to disappear down the corridors to the gods knew where. Sandor was content enough with this much, if content he could ever be, until a shadow emerged from the Great Hall in a hurry, a blue gown rustling as white gloved hands pulled it up from the floor.

 

Another shadow came hurrying after her, a tall golden shadow. Sandor saw the man grasp her by the arm, gentle but urgent, and lean in close to Lady Sansa’s ear as she stilled at his touch. “You don’t have to run,” Jaime whispered to her, his mouth too close to her ear and his body leaning against hers, but his whisper carried to Sandor. “I only want to—”

 

“What’s this?” Sandor suddenly cut in, pushing off the wall and stepping forth into sight. Jaime quickly pulled away from Lady Sansa. Her hands clutched onto her gown like iron shackles.

 

Jaime smiled, laughing nervously. “Sandor,” he said. “Oh, nothing,” Jaime quickly added, making a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Lady Sansa and I were just talking—”

 

“The lady doesn’t look too happy about that,” Sandor said in a dry rasp.

 

Jaime looked mildly surprised, his mouth closing as he shrugged his shoulders. “Really, we were just having a nice little chat—”

 

Lady Sansa turned around suddenly, looking at both of them. “Please, if you’ll excuse me, good sers, I wish to return to the feast now.”

 

 _Smart bird_ , Sandor thought. _Stay where people can see you. Don’t go wandering off alone_. “I’ll lead you back in, my lady,” Sandor replied in his gruff voice, and Lady Sansa looked unhappy about it, but she bowed her head at his offer and walked up to his side, offering her arm. Sandor took her arm and, with a final glance back at Jaime, led Lady Sansa back into the Great Hall.

 

“What was that about?” Sandor asked her frankly once they were well into the crowd past the doors, making their way through the throng. Sandor tried to find an open place somewhere that wasn’t so suffocating as the closely packed bodies jostling about them.

 

“It was nothing,” Lady Sansa said, her voice flat and distant, unwilling to talk to him.

 

“If that was nothing, then I’m the King,” Sandor replied dryly. When he looked at her, she was biting on the inside of her cheek. He changed his mind, then. If he brought her safely to the other side of the hall, she would leave him and he wouldn’t get any of the answers he wanted. He steered her to the dance floor.

 

Sansa looked alarmed. “Ser, you don’t dance . . . ”

 

“Since when?” Sandor asked her, and he held out his hand to her. She was uncertain, but she took it and he brought her to the center of the floor. He knew some simple dances, nothing fancy, but it was enough to keep her busy so they could talk. “What did Jaime want with you?” he asked in a rough whisper, but Sansa wouldn’t meet his eyes. She didn’t want to answer him.

 

“It does not matter,” she finally said.

 

“It matters.”

 

“To who?” Sansa’s eyes met his at last, cold as ice and twice as hard. “You?”

 

He did not like that. Sandor scowled down at her, and the next move had them facing opposite directions but side by side. “To your husband,” he warned.

 

Sansa became rigid at that. “What do you mean?”

 

“Would be a pity if he found out,” said Sandor, letting the implication sink in slowly. “His wife, wanting his brother more than him.”

 

Sansa reeled back and slapped him hard across the face. The entire dance floor fell to a hush, all eyes turning to them. It was quiet enough to hear a pin drop if one had fallen at that exact moment. Sandor didn’t even raise a palm to the newly blooming red handprint on his face. Sansa’s look was full of hate and fear, and she lifted her gown before running away from him and vanishing out of the Great Hall. The doors echoed behind her in the silence with a _boom_ as they closed on their own.

 

“What is the meaning of this, Clegane?” Lord Tyrion’s voice carried across the hall. Sandor looked up at him, the little lord in his high seat, and scowled.

 

“I told a crude joke,” he lied. “Gave offense to the lady. My apologies.”

 

Tyrion’s gaze was livid. “See that it does not happen again, Clegane.”

 

Slowly, the crowd began to look away from him. Murmurs and whispers stirred across the Great Hall like a cacophony of wind through the trees, and Sandor felt his ire growing with each added voice to the noise. Turning around, he stormed from the hall and left the bustling crowd to its gossip mongering.

 

His feet didn’t lead him to his private chambers, nor to the training yard or to find Lady Sansa, but down to the dungeons in Winterfell, the place for prisoners. It wasn’t a real dungeon. It appeared Winterfell had little need of those, for the dungeons looked more like rows of cozy rooms stripped of their furniture with bars instead of doors but warm, well-kept hallways connecting them. The Starks must have treated their prisoners well to have built such a place as this.

 

Or maybe, Sandor sometimes thought, they had kept the worst of it hidden somewhere even the clever Lannisters couldn’t find.

 

He snatched up a bar and dragged it against the iron poles of Asha Greyjoy’s cell, waking her from whatever uneventful sleep she might have been enjoying. She raised her head from the dirty cot laid across the floor, which was to be her bed for however long she was prisoner here, and squinted in the dark. Half riddled with sleep, she fought to bring the face of the intruder who disturbed her rest into focus.

 

When Asha’s eyes lit with recognition, she snorted in disbelief. “Can’t sleep, pretty boy?” she called out, mocking him. Even as a prisoner, she had balls.

 

Sandor bared his teeth at her. “Do I look pretty to you?”

 

“Pretty ugly,” Asha said. “But then, I would too if I had a face like yours.”

 

Of all the remarks she could make, he was used to that one. “They say you won’t talk,” he ventured, eyeing her menacingly through the bars. “Maybe I ought to beat it out of you.”

 

Asha snorted again. “Then you’d have to answer to your lord,” she said. “You’re no lord. You can’t go around doing whatever you want, beating up the daughters of important lords. You have betters to answer to, so come up with a better threat. One you can deliver, maybe? Besides,” she added with an almost casual tone and a shrug of her shoulders, “what am I doing now? You don’t call this talking?” Asha made a gesture between the two of them. “Me. You. Talking. Words, coming out of our mouths.”

 

“You know what I mean, woman,” Sandor growled. He was fed up with her already, and they had only just begun.

 

“Oh, that,” Asha said, looking pensive for a moment. The moment didn’t last. She shook her head. “Do I need to talk about that, though? Battles, strategies, and tactics put a damper on any conversation.” As if struck with a sudden idea, her eyes lit up and she slowly leaned forward. Her hands grasped the bars, fingers curling around the black tendrils that snaked out of the stone floor. “What about listening?” Asha asked, her voice lowering to almost a whisper. “I like to listen. The walls here are thin, and the guards like to gossip.”

 

Sandor should have left right then, but curiosity drove him to stay. “What do they say?” he asked. Whether he was humoring her or genuinely interested, it was hard to tell.

 

A slow smile crept on Asha’s face. “They say you’re in love with your lord’s wife, but the Imp won’t kill you because you’re too valuable.”

 

His mouth twitched. “Is that what they say?” he asked. His voice was dangerously low. “Tell me who says it, and I’ll cut out their tongues for lies.”

 

Asha’s eyes glittered with amusement. “They also say you’ve buggered the Imp’s sister on a few occasions, and maybe once or twice with her twin in participance—”

 

Sandor slammed his hand against the bars, rattling them loudly. The action startled Asha, and she jerked away out of instinct.

 

“You should watch that mouth of yours,” he warned her.

 

“Or what?” Asha asked him calmly. “You’ll cut off my other pinky?” She raised her bandaged hand, the one his sword lopped a finger off of, and wiggled her remaining appendages at him. Asha carefully backed further away from the bars, but she wasn’t afraid of him. Her eyes were calculating. “I think you should watch yours, _dog_.”

 

He’d had enough. Without another word, Sandor stormed out of the dungeons. What few people he might have passed made sure to keep their distance and not say a word to him, for if they had, he might have killed them then and there. The damn woman was right. He couldn’t touch a hair on her head without risking his, and he couldn’t kill her for what he’d heard out of her mouth. Someone was going to get it, though.

 

He was so busy being angry that he nearly passed right by a crouched figure on a small balcony at the right side of the hall, crying quietly in the moonlight. He heard it, though, and he stopped, turning to look and seeing that familiar blue gown from earlier. It was Sansa, kneeling on the stone floor of the alcove, her hands bracing her as if from a fall, as she wept out her heart to the cold and unresponsive night.

 

The words came unbidden from his throat. “What’s wrong, little bird?” he asked her, his voice startling her from her reverie. Sansa whirled around and, seeing him, hastily wiped her eyes. Her crying was gone, just like that, without so much as an effort needed to stop it. Sandor never realized how much she had mastered her emotions before. It surprised him even more when he thought about how she hadn’t hid them from him that night she came to his room to ask for help. Help he had denied, despite some part of him wanting to offer it.

 

“Nothing, ser,” she said, perfectly calm. Sansa rose from the floor in one graceful motion. He wondered if the septas had taught her that one, or if she had learned it herself.

 

In a gesture that surprised him, but surprised her even more, Sandor extended his arm out to her. “Come,” he said. “I’ll escort you back to your room.”

 

Sansa looked between his face and his arm. After a moment of debate, she made up her mind and accepted his arm. They walked in silence until Sansa ventured to break it with a curious question.

 

“Why did you threaten me about Ser Jaime?” she asked stiffly, and Sandor had to suppress the urge to laugh.

 

“He’s a devil, that one,” Sandor answered. “Don’t get mixed up with him.”

 

Sansa’s voice seemed to relax, then. “Do you mean . . . with his relationship with . . . ”

 

“Don’t go talking about that either,” Sandor warned. “Talk like that is dangerous. He and his sister, stay away from them. That’s all you need to know.”

 

Sansa glanced over at him in the darkness as they walked through another corridor together. As they passed by a torch, Sandor noticed it. “I’ve heard rumors about you, too . . . ” she whispered, as if she was afraid to say it too loud.

 

Sandor’s ruined mouth made a horrific scowl, but he didn’t look at her. “Don’t listen to damn gossip. People say a lot of things that aren’t true.”

 

Sansa looked away from him. He saw it out of the corner of his eye. “Forgive me, ser.”

 

“Don’t call me ser.”

 

They walked the rest of the way in silence until they reached her private chambers, and Sandor stood before her doorway as she turned around to look at him beyond the threshold of her door. “Thank you,” she said softly, “for escorting me to my chambers. It was very kind of you, se—Sandor.”

 

It was probably the first time she ever called him by his first name.

 

“I should check your room and make sure everything is clear,” he said suddenly, his voice more gruff than usual. Sansa looked surprised, but she stepped out of his way as he strode past her door. Sandor checked behind the draperies, looked in the closets, and even glanced under the bed. When he was satisfied no one was hiding in her room, he stood up straight and looked right at her. “Everything is clear, my lady,” he rasped.

 

“Thank you,” Sansa said softly. She looked unsure about something. Nervous, even. Without meeting his eyes, she added, “Goodnight, Sandor.”

 

He wasn’t sure what possessed him, but he strode right up to her. Sandor took her gently by the chin and lifted it. “Look at me when you say my name,” he told her, and Sansa looked up with her big blue eyes. He did something then that even he didn’t expect. He kissed her.

 

She tasted sweet and warm, and while at first she was rigid, she yielded beneath his touch. She had come to him in the night, begging for a savior, but he had only ever wanted _this_ out of her. Not what a man got from a whore, but what a man got from a woman. Sansa had always been a thing of beauty to admire from afar, a woman of kindness and courtesy, to see but never to have. Well, now he could have her, and he was a fool if he didn’t take it.

 

He couldn’t remember shutting the door, only that he did, and the process from the door to the bed had been too hasty. Sansa pulled away from him, looking afraid, but not that kind of afraid like she feared him. It was more like a child looking at a book, being told they had to read but being unsure if they could do it. Sandor knew that look because he had been there once before, years and years ago, in the same position as her.

 

He slowed down, for her sake, and he took the time to explore her body until she shook and shivered and made all of the right sounds of pleasure and desperation. And when he took her against the silk sheets, Sandor knew she was a maid—a first for him as well, in a way. She bled afterwards, but her cries during had gotten so loud he had to cover her mouth with his just to swallow them up.

 

Afterwards, it was a haze. He lied back on the bed, and she had curled up against him, her arm over his chest. Sansa was silent at first, trying to steady her breathing. Then, suddenly, her arm reached over him and her hand clutched his side, and she asked in a small voice, “Does this mean you will help me?”

 

It was the wrong thing to say. Sandor had taken her because he _wanted_ her, because he desired her, and she seemed only interested in him as a way out—a means to an end, her escape route and nothing more. Quickly, he arose from the bed and grabbed his things to redress himself. When he was done, he turned to her to give her a cold, hard look.

 

“I’ll not risk my neck for that,” Sandor said with a deadly quiet, and he left her room with her crying on her bed, sobbing like she couldn’t breathe. He felt guilty, but she used him as much as he used her. In the end, it wasn’t anything worth crying about. She’d get over it and realize there was more to life than her maidenhead, and he would get on with his.

 

Only he still felt guilty as he walked away, no matter how many times he told himself this.


	4. No Song of Knights and Fair Maidens

 

Sandor had not been alone around Lady Sansa for almost a month. She made it a point to walk everywhere with a handmaid now, and she never made eye contact with him for any reason. It might have been all in Sandor’s head, but he thought she looked the part of a woman in mourning. Her eyes were distant and faraway pools, and her mind seemed ever off in a world none of them lived in but her. He couldn’t imagine what was so serious to make her act such a way. If it was that night they spent together a month ago, then it was ridiculous and she was acting like a slighted child.

 

The real reason came to him within the coming days. There was another gathering held in the Great Hall, some matter of special importance, and Lord Tyrion rose from his seat to come around the table and stand before it. He picked up a tall clear glass of wine and tapped on it with his spoon to get everyone’s attention. The chatter in the hall drew to a quiet murmur, and he grinned at the procession before him.

 

“We have an important announcement to make,” Lord Tyrion called out above the heads of the crowd, and he turned around to hold out his arm and aim the glass of wine at his wife, Lady Sansa, behind the table. The smile on her face looked to be forced and stretched thin, but she smiled for him and it was enough. Sandor doubted the Imp even noticed the difference.

 

“We are expecting our first child together!” Lord Tyrion announced happily, and the roar filled Sandor’s ears. The crowd clapped and drowned out all other noise. Sandor couldn’t think. His head swam, and he marched straight to the largest set of doors and into the cool night air beyond them.

 

His thoughts were racing. _It’s not fucking possible_ , came the voice inside of his head. Sansa said the Imp had never touched her, and Sandor had been her first. And gods, one month ago he took her maidenhead and now she was with child, but no, it couldn’t be his. If it was his, the Imp would have sent for his head already. So, what had Sansa done?

 

The hallways were dark and dim, but he stumbled his way back to his room and drank himself into blackness. When he woke up in a mess with a hangover, he cleaned himself up as best as he could and left his chamber. Sandor made up his mind. He was going to find Sansa and ask her himself, even if he had to scare away her handmaidens first.

 

He found her in the godswood, and for once, she was alone. She knelt before the white weirwood tree, but her head wasn’t bent down in prayer. Sansa stared at the red face carved into the white bark of its trunk, but the sound of his footsteps crunching on the leaves drew her attention. Turning her head, she saw him and her gentle expression of shock became a mix of emotions all at once before it became a mask of utter blankness. There was an icy wall between him and her, invisible but very real.

 

Sansa rose quickly and backed away from his approach. He halted near the edge of the still water, wondering what he had done to Sansa to bring such a change about in her—but of course, he knew. She had tried to use him, but he had used her to sake his own desires instead, and then he refused to help her yet again. If Sandor betrayed the Lannisters, though, there was no place in all the world that would take him in then. This was his only home. Sansa ought to have understood that. No matter how much Sandor wanted to take her away from them, he couldn’t do it. There was nowhere for them to go that would ever be safe.

 

She deserved a feather pillow beneath her head and fur blankets to keep her warm at night, and she wouldn’t have that if she ran off with him. She wouldn’t have anything at all if she ran off with him, nothing but Lannister swords at her back and a lifetime of hiding. He would clothe her in rags, a tattered princess in an iron crown. The image would be laughable if it wasn’t so damn sad, but Sandor had no time for thoughts like that in his head. He pushed them all away.

 

“Is it true?” he rasped, his breath becoming smoke once it touched the cool air before his face.

 

“Is what true?” she asked him.

 

“Are you with child?”

 

Sansa gave pause at that. Her reddened lips parted ever so slightly, and her eyes fell to the snow at her feet. “Yes,” she answered, and Sandor felt his fists clench at his sides. He saw her wrap her arms around herself, pulling her cloak more tightly about her frame.

 

“Am I the father?”

 

It was a question better left unasked, but the words had passed his lips before he could recall them back, and Sansa’s face became a blank scroll. Pale parchment, unwritten on, with no emotion to give away what was hidden underneath it. “I don’t know,” was all she said in response, and it was a violent blow to his gut that took the wind right out of him. She might as well have hit him with a battering ram, for all the good it did her to say the words out loud.

 

How could she not know unless she slept with the Imp as well?

 

His stomach sank with the realization, the obvious answer hanging between them in the balance. She had slept with the Imp. It was the only answer, and Sandor would have asked more questions, but he knew it was worthless, pointless. He didn’t have to ask them to know the truth. If the Imp believed himself the father and she didn’t know who it was, then reason stood to reckon she allowed the little monster to bed her at least once.

 

“Why?” Sandor demanded between clenched teeth, and Sansa finally looked up at him. Her gaze was like iron, her eyes cold and distant. She looked at him as if he had no right to ask her that question, no right in all the world, and maybe she was right and he didn’t, but it wasn’t going to stop him from asking it.

 

“I waited for you for three weeks,” she told him. “I hoped, or some part of me did, that you would come back and take me away from this awful place.” Sansa slowly shook her head. “But you didn’t, and I thought if you got me with child, then Tyrion would know everything, and he would have me killed. The only thing I knew to do was survive,” Sansa added in quiet tones, “because I couldn’t count on you.”

 

He was hurting. It felt like every pore in his body was burning, filled with excruciating pain. The ruined side of his face might as well have been back in the coals, back in the fire, and his face twisted grotesquely in the faded silver light of the northern sky. “You could have drank moon tea,” he seethed. “No one said you had to _fuck_ the Imp.”

 

Sansa did not flinch at his words, nor did she look away from him. Whatever she had done for her survival, she had long since come to terms with it and accepted it. “Drink poison?” she asked him, as calm as she could be. “Drink poison, and hope it killed any baby I might have without killing me, too? And who would have made this for me in doses safe enough that wouldn’t kill me? The maester, the one who works for my lord husband? The lord husband I have never shared a bed with, but now I need moon tea to stop the baby that is growing inside of me?”

 

She had him there. He couldn’t argue with that. It was poison, famous for killing mothers as easily as it killed the babes, and he had suggested for her to drink it. What did that say about him, he wondered? Sandor tried to think straight, but it was hard with all of the turmoil in his head. “You said three weeks,” he rasped. “That’s near a month. When did you find out?” He could still be the father, he thought. It wasn’t so close that she couldn’t tell the difference, but Sansa was not keen on giving many answers, and she shut down, the shine in her eyes growing dull.

 

“I don’t remember,” she said this time. “There is no telling that close together.”

 

“Yes, there is,” he snapped.

 

“It does not matter,” Sansa insisted.

 

“ _It matters to me!_ ” Sandor hollered, and he flinched as his voice resonated off of the leaves in the godswood, ringing broken echoes back towards him. He hadn’t meant to do that. His temper had gotten away from him, but it was true. It did matter. If that was his child . . . well, what did it mean if that was his child? He wasn’t very well going to let the bastard Imp raise _his_ child as his own, not if he had no right or claim to him or her. The very thought filled Sandor with an indefinable rage.

 

“If it mattered to you,” Sansa said quietly, “I would have mattered to you.”

 

She said it so calmly like they were talking about the weather and not her unborn child, a child that might very well be his and yet passed off as another Lannister under the sun. Sandor had been too much of a coward to save her, and now there were two lives at stake instead of one. Part of it was his fault, that much was true, and he gritted his teeth painfully against the revelation, but he thought even his cruelty had not been as unkind as this.

 

“And if I mattered to you,” Sandor growled back, “I would have been more than just an escape route.”

 

He tore through the godswood, leaving her there in the blanket of snow and crisp leaves frozen with little icicles hanging off of their edges. Sandor stormed the castle keep, stalking through dark and winding corridors painted with large, black shadows from the flickering torches on the walls. He got into the wine that night, and drank until he blacked out and all memory failed him.

 

In the coming months, Sansa began to grow and her pregnancy showed through her clothing. At first, Sandor could pretend it was all just a bad dream, but now he couldn’t escape it no matter where he went in the castle. He even thought once he had let it go until he saw her again, and it all crumbled to dust once more. It wasn’t his desire to be so incensed, but he couldn’t help it. He was a wreck, and it was all her fault.

 

Sandor snatched her arm once in the hallway, pulling her aside when no one was looking. “Tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me, or I’ll go to your lord husband and I’ll tell him the truth of it.”

 

“Go on,” Sansa challenged him. “Tell him, and see what my lord husband does.”

 

They stared each other down, her icy blue eyes against his steel grey, and neither one of them wished to relent. Sandor released her and stalked off, defeated yet again. It was a torment he couldn’t stop revisiting, and with each month Sansa grew more, and he knew any day now a baby was to be born. Sandor wondered whether it would be a boy or a girl, would it have blue eyes or grey, and then he wondered red hair or dark hair . . .

 

“What are you thinking about?” Asha scoffed at him, and Sandor cut a hardened gaze at her. He had been down here by the cells, talking with one of the guards until the man had to leave and check on something. Sandor offered to stay behind and keep his watch until he got back. His mind must have drifted off, and when he realized it, he became angry with himself. If he kept this up, the whole fucking castle would know what was going through his head just by reading the look on his face.

 

“None of your business,” he snapped back, and Asha bit her bottom lip, a hint of a smile on her face. Her fingers curled around the bars of her cell, and she leaned forward, her gaze falling downward.

 

“You have the look of a man in love,” she said, and Sandor felt his jaw tighten in response.

 

“Speak one more word,” Sandor warned her, “and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

 

“Oh, I’ll wish I hadn’t,” Asha repeated, openly mocking him. The months of imprisonment had done nothing to ease her attitude. If anything, it had made her worse. They were treating her far too nice, Sandor thought as he scowled. That, or she was so bored down here she had nothing better to do than to piss him off for entertainment. “Come on, then,” Asha teased quietly. “Show me what you’ve got.”

 

“My fist in your _fucking_ face if you don’t shut up!” he snarled.

 

Asha slammed her hand against the bars, rattling them. “Well, come on, then!” she hollered back as she gritted her teeth. “All bark and no bite. That’s what you are. Do you think I’m as dumb as the rest of them?” she asked, and Sandor felt his blood beginning to boil with every word out of her mouth. “I know that pretty little thing, the Stark girl, the Lannister’s wife, you wanted to fuck her into oblivion, and now she’s got a big belly and you look like a lovesick dog. Is that your bastard she’s carrying, or do you think maybe it’s the Imp’s—”

 

Sandor lurched to the door of her cell, fumbling with the lock and nearly ripping the door off its hinges in an effort to get inside to her. Asha was prepared, though, and she flung herself straight into him, ramming him against the bars. Immediately, she fled for the open door, but Sandor snatched her arm and threw her back into the cell. Asha lost her footing and slipped onto the floor, her elbow colliding with stone and stunning her temporarily with pain. Sandor used the moment to grasp her arm and yank her to her feet, shoving her back against the wall.

 

She slammed her fist into the ruined side of his face, and Sandor howled in agony. He struck her with the back of his hand, sending her flying to the floor once more. Asha spat blood onto the stones at her feet, slowly pushing herself up on her hands. Sandor covered the scarred side of his face, which throbbed with pain, and glared down at her. For a moment, he did nothing, until she pushed herself up onto her knees.

 

Sandor kicked her legs out from under her, and Asha fell to the ground again. She rolled over onto her back, grinning up at him with a bloody mouth. “Such a hit with the ladies,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Tell me, is this how you bedded Sansa?” Sandor’s eyes grew wide at her use of Sansa’s first name more than at her lewd reference. Since when was an ironborn on a first name basis with a Stark? “Did you smack her bloody before pushing her to the ground?”

 

“Still can’t learn how to watch your mouth?” he growled.

 

“No,” Asha said, smiling with red-stained teeth. “I like it _rough_.” She kicked him, then, hard in the shin, sending a sharp pain straight through his leg. Her legs were strong for a woman, and she kicked Sandor’s leg right out from under him. Before he knew it, Asha was up off the ground and above him, driving her elbow into his chest with the strength of someone twice her size. Sandor’s back collided with the hard stone floor, and her hand was clenched around his throat.

 

Asha had the upper hand until Sandor recovered from his pain long enough to use all of his strength to shove her aside. She hit the floor, and he climbed on top of her, holding her down by her neck as she did with him. Before his fingers could close around her throat, Asha kneed him in the stomach and bit his other hand, which was near her mouth. With a free arm, she punched him, and they rolled over into another mess of tangled limbs amidst a ferocious struggle—this time with Asha on top.

 

Sandor wasn’t sure how it happened amidst their struggle that her lips collided with his ruined mouth, but somehow they did, and Sandor tasted blood on his tongue. It sent a heady wave of desire coursing through him, and he returned the ferocity of her kiss, or whatever it was, without a second thought to it. Asha’s hand clenched around his throat as her other hand snaked down between their bodies and unlaced his breeches, and Sandor found he liked the violence mixed with the arousal. It was intoxicating like wine, and he drank until the cup was overflowing into his mouth, her lips crashing against his, her tongue swirling against his own, and the heat between their bodies became unbearable.

 

Asha sank down onto him, her breeches discarded but the rest of her clothing still upon her, and rode him like a mare in heat. When she shuddered above him, her movements becoming erratic, he came deep within her as her hand clutched so tight about his neck he could barely breathe. She shoved herself off of him, half-naked as she stood up and bent down to snatch up her breeches. Sandor was still lying on the ground, trying to catch his breath.

 

When he finally turned his head to look at her, Asha was dressed once more and standing at the open cell door. “Thanks,” she called over to him, a sly grin appearing on her face, “for the free ride.” Sandor’s eyes grew wide. Before he could get up, Asha sprinted down the hallway out of his sight.

 

“ _Guards!_ ” Sandor howled, clambering to his feet. He adjusted himself quickly and darted out of the cell, following her fading footsteps. Even though he could no longer see her, he could hear her, and he’d be damned if she escaped because of his foolish ass.

 

“ _GUARDS!_ ”

 

His voice echoed down the corridors, ringing off the walls. Men came in answer to him, appearing out of the woodwork like spiders in the dark, and they tackled her in one of the hallways. Sandor heard the struggle. The ring of a knife being drawn, the shocked cry of a dying man, and then Asha’s screams of fury as they caught her and disarmed her. Sandor came upon them as they yanked Asha to her feet, a dead man lying at their feet.

 

“She killed Walder,” one of them said, and Sandor looked down at the dead boy on the ground. He wasn’t but ten and five, a green boy of summer, but the knife killed him all the same. Sandor knew it wasn’t weakness that got the boy in the end, but unluckiness. Asha didn’t kill him because he was a boy. If that were Sandor, he’d be dead too. It was survival for her, an ironborn of the sea.

 

Sandor felt his mouth twitch in the corner. “Take her back to her cell,” he barked, and they followed his orders, but the hate in Asha’s eyes followed him until the darkness swallowed her up, and Sandor hoped she never got loose again.

 

Because if she did, he knew she’d kill him.


	5. Nursery Rhymes in Bad Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the events in this chapter were inspired by Micheletto on the Showtime television show “The Borgias,” the badass ginger assassin who at one point plays nanny and bodyguard to the baby of Lucrezia Borgia, his master’s sister. I just, ajlksa;dla, I have this thing about merciless killers showing compassion and love for babies.

 

Brandon Lannister was born with a head full of dark hair and eyes as blue as the sky. There was not a strand of Lannister gold in his hair, not a streak of Tully red, and he had not the green eyes of the Lannisters either. Everyone said he looked like the spitting image of his grandfather, Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell, save for the eyes he inherited from his lady mother. Yet some part of Sandor knew the truth, and that was this child was no child of Lannister blood. He looked nothing like the Imp, and the only thing he had from his lady mother was her eyes.

 

When Tyrion asked for a guard over the baby, no one expected Sandor to step forward and ask for the task. Even the Imp seemed surprised, but he granted the request to Sandor without any hesitation. Lady Sansa looked shocked as well, and she opened her mouth as if to protest the decision, but she held back at the last moment. Sandor remembered staring at her across the distance of the room, his gaze daring her to suggest otherwise. Lady Sansa closed her mouth, holding her chin up high. Her expression gave nothing away.

 

Sandor pledged his sword to Brandon Lannister the same way he pledged it to Joffrey Baratheon when Cersei had asked it of him all those years ago. He bent the knee, recited the words before Lord Tyrion, and then he was dubbed the sworn shield of the little squalling babe. It was a quick process that took no more than a few moments, but when it was done, everything in the castle had changed within those short few moments. No one questioned Sandor’s motives behind the request. Perhaps no one dared to because they feared him, but it was a silly thought at the end of the day.

 

When Sandor picked the child up into his arms, he held the babe so delicately that it was laughable how anyone could look at this same man and be afraid of him. He feared hurting Brandon, a fragile little thing in his big arms, but he handled him with care. As the boy’s sworn shield, Sandor could visit him whenever he liked. He could take part in raising him, and he could be there whether Sansa wanted him there or not. He could play with the child, and he could stay outside Brandon’s room late at night in case the babe woke up scared in the middle of the night, and no one could say a damn thing about it.

 

Sandor had served the role of surrogate father in his position as a sworn shield to Joffrey, but the boy had become a monster despite everything Sandor tried to teach him. For some souls, there was no saving. Joffrey had been one of those unfortunates. Some part of Sandor had cared for the boy almost as his own, but he knew at the end of the day Joffrey was not his and no amount of fathering could curb the darkness in him. Sandor witnessed the madness at an early age, long before Cersei caught it. He had brought it to her attention when Joffrey tortured and butchered his very first pet.

 

Sandor still remembered the look of horror in Cersei’s eyes as she looked down at the remains of the animal, her hand coming to her mouth. There weren’t many things in the world that could shake Cersei Lannister, but witnessing the truth of her son had been one of them. With her husband away with her brother, Cersei had no comfort from them. Sandor still remembered the way she had kissed him, almost clumsily, still young herself and so afraid of her boy. Cersei hadn’t been as cruel in those days, but the coming years had changed her drastically. She wasn’t the same anymore as she had been back then. Joffrey had altered all of that for her.

 

Looking down at the newborn babe in his arms as he rocked him to sleep, Sandor hoped Brandon did not become another Joffrey. He would do everything in his power this time to make sure that did not happen. The room was dark, laced with moonlight from the window, and Sandor was glad for the darkness. The castle was all asleep, and he could just sit here with Brandon in his arms and no one could ask him why he showed so much affection to a child that wasn’t his own.

 

When Brandon fell asleep after his midnight fit, Sandor gently placed him back in his bedding. From the doorway, he heard a rustle and quickly he looked up. Sansa stood in the doorway wrapped in a grey robe, her hair falling down her shoulders in an auburn cascade. Sandor stared at her in silence at first, not daring to say anything. Eventually, she pushed away from the doorframe and made her way across the room to Brandon’s bed. Sansa’s fingers caressed over the boy’s forehead in his sleep, and she gazed at him lovingly with eyes that only a mother could have for her child.

 

Sandor retreated away from them, leaning against the wall beside the window. He looked outside, refusing to speak. It was best that he didn’t say anything. There was no telling what he would say if he opened his mouth. Sandor stared at the moon in the sky, gleaming with white light, when Sansa broke the silence.

 

“He’s not yours,” Sansa said softly, and Sandor looked over at her. She was gazing down at her baby boy. “I thought you should know that before you start to think it. I know that is why you offered to be his sworn shield . . . ”

 

“You don’t know why I offered,” Sandor told her, and he was calm for once. He didn’t believe her for one second. She was only saying it in hopes he didn’t grow too attached to the child, but it was too late for that. It had only taken one look at the boy’s face, one look, and he had known.

 

“He is a babe,” Sansa whispered. “He doesn’t need you in his room all night.”

 

“Right,” Sandor said dryly. “Because you know so well what he needs.”

 

Sansa raised her gaze to glare at him. Her hands shook on Brandon’s bed frame. She looked like she wanted to snatch the babe right up into her arms and take him away from Sandor, but the boy was fast asleep and peaceful. She wasn’t going to touch him, but Sandor could see her hands itch with the thought. She was angry of the time he spent with the boy. She might even have been jealous of it. As it stood, he almost spent as much with Brandon as she did, if not more. Brandon’s wet nurse took away from some of Sansa’s time and duties, but that was the way of highborns. Give the dirty work to someone else to do.

 

“You go too far,” Sansa told him, her voice trembling with the effort. “I do not mind you spending time with Brandon, but do not question my love for my son and his well-being.”

 

She was right. That was a bit far, even for him. Sandor looked off to his left away from her, clearing his throat. “You’re right, my lady,” he agreed. “Apologies for my behavior.”

 

Sansa looked back down at Brandon. “Do you ever sleep anymore? You cannot guard him if you do not sleep yourself.”

 

“Sometimes,” he said. After a pause, he added, “I don’t need much sleep.”

 

It was awkward, he thought, the way they tried to be friendly despite everything that happened before. All because of a child, they could put it aside as much as humanly possible. They could find some sort of common ground. The common ground lied on a cozy blanket five feet away from Sandor, breathing soundly in his sleep as he dreamed about whatever it was that babes dreamed about as infants.

 

“Do not wear yourself out,” Sansa said in a quiet voice, and she looked up at Sandor. He met her eyes across the room. Her face looked older now. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her face held a sharper quality to it, the roundness of youth leaving her. She was still so young, but Sandor supposed life and having the baby had taken a toll on her. He nodded his head at her once to show he accepted the advice, but otherwise remained quiet. “My son needs all the protection he deserves,” she added, and with that, Sansa turned around and left him alone in the room with Brandon.

 

Sandor slept in a chair in Brandon’s room that night, and when the morning rolled around with a cold chill, Sandor awoke and made sure to wrap Brandon in a warm bundle before lifting him out of the small bed. Brandon woke up in Sandor’s arms, perfectly calm and quiet as he looked at Sandor, and Sandor stared back at the little boy. Brandon made a little noise in the back of his throat, opening his mouth, and squeaked out a noise that might have made sense to the babe, but Sandor didn’t understand it.

 

Brandon’s wet nurse came in to feed him and change him, and when the babe was set and ready to go, Sandor took him back from the wet nurse and walked the castle’s halls with him in the crook of his arm, his free hand on the pommel of his sword all the while. No one would ever dare to touch the boy in any way that would harm him as long as Sandor was the one to guard him. They could whisper whatever they wanted to about Sandor behind his back, but none of them had the balls to say it to his face. Everyone feared him, and rightly so. He’d put a sword through any man or woman who tried anything with Brandon, not that he expected anyone would do so, but anything was possible and Sandor was distrustful on principle.

 

He carried the babe to his mother and lord later in the day when they requested his presence, and Sandor left the babe with them as he went about his own business for the day. He had a visit to make to a certain prisoner down in the dungeons of Winterfell. The way was darker and colder than he remembered it being, but he pushed the thoughts from his head as he descended the steps. Sandor offered to take up the guard’s duties if he wanted to slack off, and Sandor passed the man a coin. The man agreed with a smirk and walked off, leaving Sandor alone as the only guard at that particular post.

 

Asha sat on her dirty cot on the floor, lifting her eyes to him when he went to stand before her cell. Her blank face belied the tension thrumming underneath the surface. Her hand twitched, fingers curling inward, wishing for a knife to grip. Sandor knew the feeling all too well not to recognize it.

 

“You want out of here?” Sandor rasped, and Asha narrowed her eyes at him.

 

“I’m not fucking you for the empty promise of escape,” Asha told him bluntly. “That was a one time thing, pretty boy. I saw you pay the guard off. If you open that door and try anything, I’ll kill you.”

 

Sandor returned her sour look. “No one said anything about fucking, so hold your tongue and hear me out.”

 

Asha raised her chin. Her eyes were stormy and calculating again, but she waved her hand at the impasse. “Go on,” she said.

 

“They’re going to keep you here as a war hostage,” Sandor informed her. “They have no intentions of releasing you, not for ransom or treaty. You could be here for years. Do you want to die here?”

 

Asha was quiet at first, but instead of answering, she had a question of her own for him. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

 

“I don’t,” he said.

 

“Then, why?”

 

“Does it matter?” Sandor asked her. “Either you want to escape, or you don’t. Pick one. I don’t care. If you don’t want the opportunity, I’ll be on my way.” Sandor turned around to leave and took two steps before Asha’s voice called out to him.

 

“Wait!” she said, scrambling to her feet. At the sound of her hurry, Sandor stopped walking. Asha approached the bars of her cell with more caution. He looked over at her in the darkness, his face giving away nothing. “What do you want?” she asked. “No one does favors like this for free. You want something. What is it?”

 

Sandor’s cold eyes were like iron as he stared at her. “I want you gone,” he said.

 

Asha’s brow creased in confusion. She looked like she might ask him why, but she must have decided against it. “How?” she asked him instead. “When?”

 

“Tonight,” Sandor said. “I’ll send a squire. It’s safer that way. You leave without bloodshed, or I’ll hunt you down and butcher you and your men.” Sandor held up his hand, pointing his finger at her. “No one is to be hurt, do you understand me?”

 

“Deal,” Asha said without hesitation, and Sandor nodded at her and walked off.

 

He was asleep that night when it was to take place, so as no suspicion could fall on him for being involved in any way. Sandor had moved into new quarters closer to Brandon’s bedroom, and he awoke in the middle of the night to a scream. He jumped out of bed, and in a hurry grabbed his sword and bolted for the door. Sandor wore only breeches with a knife strapped at his waist, unprepared for battle and bare waist up. Even out of his armor with only a dagger and sword, though, he was still a force to be reckoned with.

 

In the hallway stood three figures, two men both armed and each holding someone. The one to the left had Sansa by the neck, a knife in his hand glinting in the darkness against her throat. She was crying, trying to reach out to the other one, pleading. The second man to the left held Brandon, squalling, a knife to the babe’s chest. They whirled at the sound of Sandor bursting into the hall, and Sandor took one look at the knives on Sansa and Brandon and saw red.

 

“Put down the knives,” Sandor ordered as calmly as possible, “and I won’t gut you from throat to groin.”

 

“Release Asha!” cried the one holding Sansa, a dark-haired youth of exceptionally good looks. If Sandor remembered correctly, the boy’s name was Tristifer. He was trembling, despite his hold on Sansa. He was the weak link. Sandor didn’t have to worry about him. He had to worry about the other one.

 

The other one, holding Brandon, was as calm as still water. He was a beardless boy as well, but cold and fierce compared to the other one. Sandor had no idea what his name was, but he was ironborn through and through. Sandor didn’t care about his name, though. They were both dead men as far as he was concerned, whether they put down those knives or not.

 

“Asha for the squalling child,” said the one holding Brandon. “You want the babe? Give us Asha.”

 

Asha was supposed to be freed along with her few captured men, but they acted as if she was still imprisoned in her cell. Where was that squire boy, damn it? What had happened to him? Why were these buggers free and Asha still behind bars? Something had gone horribly wrong with his plan, but there was no fixing it now. It was fucked.

 

“I’m going to tell you how this is going to go,” Sandor said with a deadly quiet. “You’re going to release the child safe to his mother, and then you’re going to let go of his mother, and she is going to come to my side with the babe in her arms. You will surrender your weapons, and you will be allowed to live another day.”

 

“You think we’re dumb enough to believe that?” said the one holding Brandon. Sandor realized, with a sudden fear, the blade he held to Brandon’s chest was covered in blood. Quickly, Sandor’s eyes scanned the babe, but there were no marks on him, no wounds.

 

“No,” Sandor said, returning his attention to the man. “I think you’re smart enough to believe it.”

 

Tristifer must have believed it was their only option. Out of his fear, he gently let go of Sansa and stepped back, holding his knife up. His friend turned to look at him, briefly removing his knife from Brandon, and Sandor took the opportunity. “Sansa, the boy!” he hollered, and Sandor ripped out the dagger he slept with and threw it in a perfect aim straight between the hips of the man holding Brandon. It was the only open target on his body that wouldn’t have a chance of striking Brandon as well.

 

Sansa screamed as the man fell with a howl of anguish, and she quickly dashed forward, grabbing Brandon from his arm. Scooping the babe into her arms, she ran to Sandor and hid behind him, clutching Brandon to her chest as she tried to catch her breath through her tears. Sandor advanced on the man with his sword and hacked straight down in one fell swoop. Blood flew and splattered the hallway and Sandor, but he didn’t care. As long as the bugger was dead, he didn’t care at all.

 

The other one was running away. Sandor wrenched his dagger from the dead man and threw it at Tristifer’s back. It struck the boy in the shoulder, and he howled in pain as he fell to the stones beneath his feet. Hurt, but not dead. Sandor would let that one live for sparing Sansa’s life and giving him the chance to rescue Brandon.

 

Sandor turned to look at Sansa, heaving out a deep breath, and walked towards her. “Are you all right?” he asked. Sansa nodded quickly, her hand cradling Brandon’s head to her chest as the babe cried and wailed. When Sandor reached her, he touched the boy’s head. “The boy?” he asked, quieter this time. Sansa nodded wordlessly again, fresh tears spilling anew.

 

“Yes,” she said, breathless. “Yes, thank you—”

 

She kissed him. Leaning up into him, Sansa kissed him, and her lips lingered far longer than necessary. Sandor gently returned the kiss, his free hand coming up behind her head to tangle in her hair as he held her to his mouth. He parted his lips against hers, slowly enjoying the sweet taste of her mouth against his own in the moonlight of the washed out corridor.

 

In his mother’s arms with Sandor’s shadow leaning over them and Sandor’s familiar smell, Brandon suddenly stopped crying, lulled into a peaceful quiet with the sense of being perfectly protected right where he was in Sansa’s arms with Sandor watching over them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: “Seven Hail Strangers,” in which Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Oberyn Martell, and Ellaria Sand come to visit Winterfell. Cersei has a proposal for Sandor, and Jaime has darker intentions than it seems hidden up his sleeve.


	6. Seven Hail Strangers

 

Golden trumpets heralded the new arrivals as a cold gust of wind blew from the north to chill the waiting procession. They all stood there in the cold, wearing their thickest garments as protection against the chill, to greet the highborn guests coming to Winterfell. A great ornate litter came through the gate emblazoned with red and gold and prancing lions, and Sandor knew immediately who resided inside of it. He had been trying to prepare himself for her arrival, but to be true, there was little preparation from any visit involving Cersei Lannister.

 

To add injury to insult, Oberyn Martell rode in at the front with his paramour, Ellaria Sand, at his side on her own noble steed. Despite the Viper’s marriage to Cersei Lannister, he still treated his paramour with more respect and honor than his wife. It brought a murmur of shocked whispers from the crowd to witness this, but Sandor wasn’t in the least bit surprised by it. He doubted many people expected Oberyn to give up his mistress and the mother of four of his children simply because he was married to a Lannister. The Viper was his own man, and the Lannisters wouldn’t scare him into abandoning Ellaria or casting her from his side in public. He rode beside her without shame, his proud head held high.

 

When their party was all safely within the gates of Winterfell, the procession was greeted properly by Lord Tyrion and Lady Sansa. Neither Lady Sansa nor Lord Tyrion looked all that happy about having the Imp’s sister come to visit, but Lady Sansa hid her unhappiness better than the Imp. Tyrion looked like he wanted nothing better than to drown himself in a barrel of wine and never wake up again, and Sandor snorted in amusement at that. He would fetch the barrel of wine and drown the little bugger in it if that was his wish.

 

The party made its way into the Great Hall, and while Sandor stayed for the feasting, he left as soon as he was full and somewhat tipsy from the wine. The last thing he wanted to do was stay amongst the company of high lords and ladies, all making uncomfortable jokes and plotting different ways to kill each other. Sometimes he thought the world would be better off without all of this pecking order codswallop getting in the way of regular people trying to live their normal lives and ending up at the end of a sword because they were born lower than the rest.

 

His feet travelled an all too familiar path to the dungeons in Winterfell, though he wasn’t going there to see Asha Greyjoy.

 

Since that night when her men nearly killed Sansa and Brandon, bad blood ran black between them despite it all being a simple mistake on part of the squire. The boy had forgotten to grab Asha’s cell key, and then he went to free the men first. When he couldn’t produce a key for Asha’s cell to them, the one Sandor killed, Qarl his name was, stabbed the boy in the throat and tried to release Asha by picking the lock. Gods only knew what Qarl told Asha because Asha now believed it was all a ruse from the beginning, which Sandor had been playing her for a game.

 

When they ran off to get hostages to secure her release and that went bad, Qarl ended up dead and Tristifer with a knife in his shoulder because of Sandor. Somehow that wasn’t the worst part of it. Qarl had been Asha’s lover, and Sandor had killed him. That was the worst part. Asha’s eyes were like black pits staring out at Sandor when he had gone to her cell to try and figure out what had happened that night, and she promised him she would gut him from balls to neck if she ever got out of there. She called him a liar and false man, and where Sandor would have preferred anger, Asha’s fury was like a solid stone deep in the pit of her belly.

 

“Pray to your gods I never get out of here, dog,” Asha had told him, her voice firm but far too calm. “I will kill you, your pretty little woman, and that squalling babe you put in her belly.” Sandor had left her after that. The Greyjoy bitch could die for all he cared. As soon as he thought of something, he would find a way to get rid of her. The less longer she was a prisoner and the sooner she was in the ground, the better he would sleep at night.

 

Sandor spoke with the captain of the guard, Osfryd, about some business regarding a new group of prisoners coming into Winterfell’s dungeons. More ironborn captains had been captured on raiding missions into the North. Lord Balon was furious at his daughter’s capture, and he had declared war against the North and Lord Tyrion at its seat of power. While they had killed all of the lesser men, there were a lot of captains. Osfryd was not comfortable about it.

 

“We shouldn’t have this many ironborn alive in our walls,” Osfryd cautioned, leaning forward and trying to lower his voice so no one but Sandor would hear him. “If something happens like last time, and they get out . . . ”

 

“That won’t happen again,” Sandor said in his gravelly voice. “Double up the guards. Triple them if you have to.”

 

“This is folly, though,” Osfryd persisted. “What is Lord Tyrion thinking? He should execute them immediately, not lock them up.”

 

“Lord Tyrion is soft,” Sandor said, his mouth twitching. “He won’t kill them.”

 

“He is a _fool_ ,” Osfryd snapped, shaking his head. “I can double the guards. I could even triple them, but it’s still not safe. That might even be worse. If someone betrays us—”

 

“We’ll kill them,” Sandor finished for him with a gleam in his eyes, and Osfryd closed his mouth in a tight thin line and said no more. As Osfryd disappeared down the corridor into darkness, Sandor leaned against the wall and tried to think how he was going to sleep at night with all of these sea urchins in the castle. It was dangerous. Osfryd was right about that, but the Imp wouldn’t execute prisoners he thought might be of value in the middle of a war. Tyrion was a man of cunning, not a man of brute force—and because of him they were going to have a small army of ironborn lurking in the dark cells below their feet.

 

“I never would have thought you a thinking man,” said a familiar voice from nearby, and Sandor turned his head to see a figure approaching in the darkness of the hallway. In a gown as red as blood with her long golden hair half pinned up and half falling in loose curls, even a fool could see Cersei Lannister was graceful and beautiful, but she was a deadly viper worse than that husband of hers.

 

Sandor removed himself from the wall and stood up straighter. He bent his head at her in a small bow, but he never called her _my lady_. There were things only a dog could get away with, and that was one of them. Cersei smiled at his gesture of respect, but the light never reached her green eyes.

 

“How has Winterfell been treating you?” she asked him, her hands folded so neatly in front of her.

 

“Same as any other place,” Sandor rasped in answer.

 

“Do you miss King’s Landing?”

 

 _No_ , he thought. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes.”

 

Cersei raised her defined chin, looked away from him, and began to pace the hall. “It’s a pity,” she said, and surprisingly her voice was quiet, “that you had to come here. I would have preferred you to stay in my service. You are a loyal man, Sandor. I have so few of those in my life . . . ”

 

Sandor knew without anything further said that she needed something of him. Cersei didn’t care about people anymore. She only cared about herself. She might have cared once, a long time ago, but her eyes were dead now and there was no love in them for anyone, except for her children. Sandor very much doubted she even loved Jaime. Cersei only used her twin the way she used everyone else—to get them to do things for her, to pull and twist at invisible strings and hope for a favorable outcome of events.

 

He knew her long enough to know that, or he wouldn’t have survived as long as he had in her service.

 

Cersei approached him from the side where he could barely see her. One of her arms slowly curled itself around one of his almost lovingly, and her other hand came to rest on the side of his face. She was facing the ruined side of his face, where he had brushed over his hair to try and cover his scars as best as he could, and it was his hair that had hidden her approach to him.

 

Sandor was no pretty man to look at, and Cersei loved a pretty man, so he always knew it was never his face she consigned herself to, but his power. He was a strong man and a deadly man, and Cersei admired that of him—and she had used it for years and years and years. He had been her dog before he was Joffrey’s dog, though not many people remembered that.

 

The back of Cersei’s fingers stroked his face in an attempt to flatter him, but Sandor was not flattered by it. He let her think whatever she wanted to think, waiting patiently for her to reveal whatever it was she wanted of him. He wanted to get on with it and get on with his night, and the longer she kept him here cooing at him, the more of his time she wasted because she couldn’t get to her point. Cersei was always good at a dramatic buildup, but he really didn’t have time for one. There was business to attend to, business she was holding him back from.

 

“I need your help, Sandor,” Cersei murmured, her voice taking on a sad quality, and there it was at last. “I don’t know who else to turn to. . . . Father won’t listen to me, and Jaime says I am being a fool, but I know you will listen to me . . . ” She gently brushed his hair aside, and finally Sandor turned his head to look at her.

 

“What is it?” he asked, though he had no intentions of doing whatever she asked of him. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

 

“Tyrion is trying to have me killed—” Cersei choked at that, tears coming into her eyes. She removed her hand from Sandor’s face and brought it to her mouth. The tears spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t feel safe. All I can think of . . . all I can think of . . . ”

 

“Go on,” Sandor urged her, but he already knew where this was going.

 

Cersei met his gaze with her vibrant green eyes, and despite the tears falling down her cheeks, the sadness did not reach those beautiful eyes. Her hand reached out for his wrist, grasping it hard. “Someone must kill him first,” she whispered, and then she covered her mouth again and began to cry anew all over again.

 

Sandor’s gaze was hard. Her tears did not sway him. “I’ll kill him when and if your father says so,” he told her, “and not before.”

 

Cersei’s head whipped up at that. Her crying suddenly stopped, and she blinked at him, narrowing her eyes. Just as soon as she realized her expression, she schooled it into calmer inquiry and leaned forward, her hands smoothing themselves over his chest. “If there is something you want of me to do this for me,” Cersei began in a soft voice, and she pulled slowly at the laces near the top of his jerkin to undo them, “you need only—”

 

Sandor brusquely took her by the shoulders and pushed her back, stunning Cersei at first. As easily as she had played the gentle woman, her face transformed in a rage and she ripped herself from his hands.

 

“You _dare_ —”

 

“I don’t dare,” Sandor quickly cut her off, “but I don’t want that of you, and I know you don’t want it of me, so I ought to spare you from having to look at my ugly and disfigured face when you don’t have to. Consider it a blessing.”

 

Cersei raised her chin up as she glared at him, her mouth becoming a thin line of fury. “Am I too _old_ for you? Perhaps you’d prefer someone younger—” Cersei paused, and then she laughed all of a sudden. For once, her green eyes were gleaming, but it was not because of anything good. “It’s true, then,” she said. “You’re in love with the Stark girl. How pitiful. Well, she’s already taken one beast to bed. What’s one more?”

 

Cersei closed the distance between them, smirking at him. Very gently, she patted her hand against his chest. “Good luck with that,” she cooed, and she turned around and walked away from him as quickly as her feet would allow her without taking away from the grace of her movements. Sandor waited until Cersei Lannister disappeared from sight until he swore at the darkness.

 

He could only hope this didn’t come back to bite him in the ass.

 

Two days after the Martells rode in with Cersei Lannister, her twin brother showed up with his own group of retainers trailing behind him. There had been no formal announcement of Jaime Lannister’s coming to Winterfell, so his appearance startled Sandor, but he ought to have suspected Jaime would come at the chance to see his sister. The journey of the Martells to the North had been known news all over the realm. Jaime must have heard it and departed for Winterfell within a reasonable time frame to arrive while his sister was visiting.

 

Sandor saw to his usual duties and Brandon, and while he longed for a moment alone with Sansa to talk to her about what had happened that night with the kiss, he had never gotten a moment to do so. After Sansa and Brandon’s attack, the Imp wanted to spend lots of unnecessary time around them. Whenever Sandor saw her with Brandon, someone else was always nearby, and now Lady Sansa and Lord Tyrion had guests to entertain. Not only that, but it was the Imp’s own family. Sansa was never alone, and Sandor never got a chance to talk with her.

 

A week after Jaime’s arrival, in which the lion spent every waking moment around either his brother or his sister, Sandor was wandering the halls to pass the time with a small inspection of the area. He was always on his guard, watching everything that went on inside the castle. Sandor sometimes thought he knew a lot more than he wanted to know about the people living here with some of the things he had seen, heard, and walked in on accidentally.

 

It was during his inspection that he heard a familiar sound coming from one of the rooms. As he leaned closer to the door, he recognized the noise of two paramours. Sandor snorted at that, turned to walk away, and that was when he heard it—the familiar moan his little bird made when he bedded her all that time ago. Every muscle seized up in Sandor’s body, and he told himself to walk away, just walk away, but he couldn’t.

 

He grasped the door handle and shoved it open, startling the occupants inside the room.

 

Jaime Lannister had his breeches open as he stood before a desk, and sprawled across that desk with her dress raked up and her legs wrapped firmly around Jaime’s waist, was Sansa. Sandor saw red, and he drew his sword. Jaime quickly scrambled away from Sansa, tucked himself away, and fixed his breeches as Sansa hurriedly covered herself up as well, scooting back onto the desk. She wrapped her arms around her small frame in fear, but Sandor was focused all on Jaime as he advanced forward with his sword out. Jaime had his hands held up, and he tried to smile and laugh to relieve the tension of the situation.

 

“Look,” Jaime said, “I know this looks awkward, but there’s a perfectly good explanation for it.”

 

“Oh?” Sandor snarled, tilting his head as if to amuse the man. “What’s that?”

 

“I’m . . . fucking my brother’s wife,” Jaime told him flatly, clapping his hands together. “But look, Sandor . . . we go way back, you and me. There’s no need for Tyrion to find out. I know he’s your lord now, but I’m sure we can come to an arrangement—”

 

“Draw your sword,” Sandor growled.

 

Jaime’s expression slowly grew to realize the seriousness of the situation, and he put his arms down, lowering his hand onto his sword hilt. He hadn’t even taken it off to fuck her, the bloody little prick—

 

“Sansa,” Jaime warned her, “go find your husband, and warn him there’s about to be a bloodbath.”

 

Sansa looked between the two men in fear. “No, please,” she tried to plead with them. “Don’t—”

 

“ _Go!_ ” Sandor roared at her, turning to aim his look of hatred at her. Sansa jumped at his outburst, looking absolutely terrified for her life. Her lips were trembling, and there were tears in her eyes. When she saw the reddened look in the whites of Sandor’s eyes, she scrambled down from the desk. Sansa ran out of the room as fast as her feet could carry her.

 

Jaime drew his sword. “Is this really what you want, Sandor?” he asked, slowly beginning to circle the other man.

 

Sandor matched his movements. “I want to cut off your balls and cock and feed them to the pigs,” Sandor answered him. “But I’ll settle for this.”

 

Jaime’s face drew tight, and then he narrowed his eyes. “This is personal,” he said slowly. “You’re not mad on behalf of your lord. You’re mad at me. Over Sansa?” A look of understanding lit up behind Jaime’s eyes, widening them. “You’re in love with h—”

 

Sandor hollered in rage and swung his sword. Jaime raised his just in time to block Sandor’s blade with the sound of metal ringing on metal around them, and then Jaime pulled away and swung under, trying to catch Sandor at the stomach. Sandor beat his sword away with the flat of his blade, and then he sent a cut from the left at Jaime’s sword fighting arm, slicing him good under his coat. Jaime cried out and stumbled backwards, shielding his arm and looking down at the blood staining his hand, but Sandor came at him again with no reprieve.

 

Jaime caught the blow with his sword and deflected it, having to ignore his wound if he wanted to fight, but Sandor could see the fear in the lion’s eyes. There weren’t many men who could stand up to Jaime Lannister in a sword fight, but Sandor was one of them and he was in a blind battle rage. Sandor cut his sword from the bottom left and up, and Jaime caught it, shoving it away, before swinging at Sandor with his own elegant slice through the air. Jaime’s blade caught on Sandor’s upper arm near the shoulder. There was blood on Jaime’s blade, but Sandor didn’t feel it.

 

In an increasingly maddening fury, they fought their way across the room, tearing up furniture and draperies in the process and landing equal blows and wounds upon each other. It wasn’t until by a fluke that Jaime’s foot caught in a fallen curtain that he tripped and his back collided with the floor, and Sandor had the tip of his blade pointed right at Jaime’s heart.

 

“ _CLEGANE!_ ” shouted Lord Tyrion’s voice from behind him near the doorway. “You will put your blade up at _once_!”

 

Sandor stood over Jaime, breathing hard and ragged, as Jaime stared up at him with an evident fear in his eyes. Jaime released his sword and held up his hands, surrendering, but Sandor didn’t want to let him get away with it. He couldn’t let him get away with it.

 

“I will _not_ repeat myself, Clegane,” came Tyrion’s voice again.

 

Sandor withdrew his sword from Jaime’s chest and sheathed it at his side. Slowly, Jaime rose from the floor without taking his eyes off of Sandor. Jaime left his sword on the ground for the moment, refusing to pick it up again in such a heated atmosphere as the one that lay between him and Sandor now. Sandor turned away from Jaime and stormed out of the room right past the Imp, even though he could hear the little man calling out his name over and over again.

 

He walked the halls blindly until a familiar figure blocked his path, and Sandor finally halted despite his fury. Today, Cersei wore a green dress instead of a red one. She smiled at him, but there was no kindness in the smile. She stepped closer to Sandor and leaned towards him from the side.

 

“It’s a pity about that pretty little bird,” Cersei said, letting her words sink in slowly. “You see,” her hand came up to brush against his chest, “I told Jaime I wanted to play with her, but I thought it might work better if he seduced her first. A fragile little girl like her might be scared of a woman coming onto her, so I told him to have his way with her, and then bring her to me and we could share her . . . ” Cersei’s hand gently patted his chest. “Too bad that last plan won’t come to fruition.”

 

She raised her gaze to Sandor’s eyes, and the smirk on her face almost made Sandor bash her head against the wall to their right. He didn’t, of course. It was one thing to attack Jaime. It was another thing altogether to go after Cersei. She knew it, and he knew it. Sandor clenched his fists at his sides, his jaw gritted so tight his head began to hurt from it.

 

Cersei leaned close to his ear. “I just wanted to see the look on your face after you saw your precious bird fucking another man,” she murmured. With that, she pulled back and, satisfied with her work, turned on her heels and strode calmly down the hallway away from him.

 

Sandor stood there for what felt like an eternity. Finally, he turned to the wall and slammed his fist into it. He beat his fist bloody against the wall, hollering and cursing all the while. When he had broken half of his fingers and the stones were smeared with his blood, Sandor turned around and fell against the wall with his back and slid to the floor.

 

Putting his face in his hands, he cried.


	7. Broken Beds for Broken Men

 

The godswood was quiet and filled with snow. In a darkened world of winter, the glistening white frost held an ominous but beautiful quality to it. It had trickled as little cold droplets into the roots of the trees, seeping away their life and green, leaving behind a bitter blank slate of grey death across the world. It felt suiting. The Stark colors were grey and white, and they were all dead. Lord Eddard Stark had been beheaded on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor, his lifeblood flowing into the mouths of the jeering crowd below him as they called for his death. The Stark boys, Bran and Rickon, were murdered by Theon Turncloak here in the very walls of Winterfell, if the rumors were to be believed as they had been told for years now. Arya Stark was likely long dead, her bones lying in a ditch somewhere as her final resting place, and Catelyn Stark and her son, King Robb of the North, had been murdered at the Red Wedding.

 

The only Stark left wasn’t even a Stark anymore. She was made a Lannister by a marriage vow, and her coat was now the color of gold and red. She was more than just a Lannister by marriage, though, but a Lannister in bed as well. It was a thought Sandor could not erase from his head, no matter how hard he had tried to do so in the past few weeks. The images of her with the Kingslayer were burned into his memory as if by a scorching brand, searing their mark into his flesh as a constant pain for Sandor even in moments when she was nowhere around him.

 

He had come to her today in the godswood to find out the truth at the bottom of the matter. They had been avoiding each other for weeks now, him because of his ire and her because of her shame. Sandor thought it was shame at least, but in truth he could not be sure. Both of them had been unable to face what had occurred between him, her, and the Kingslayer. Though the Kingslayer was long gone from Winterfell, his gilded shadow still remained behind, hanging over them and blotting out the sun with his false gold and his false promises.

 

Sandor was sure the Kingslayer had made many to Sansa before he had lifted her skirts.

 

His footsteps as he approached her bent figure by the weirwood were muffled by the sinking drifts of snow that crunched ever so slightly beneath the weight of his boots. As she was in the middle of prayer, Sansa knelt before the weirwood tree with her head bowed in a gesture of supplication to the gods of her father. Though upon his approach, she lifted her chin to some extent as if in silent acknowledgement of his presence. Her gaze was now upon the white bark of the weirwood tree’s trunk, cold winter eyes to match the dying world around them.

 

Sandor knelt beside her without uttering a word, the snow cold against his knees and thighs as the frost seeped in past the barrier of his clothing. He did not turn to look at her, nor did he speak to her. She did not speak to him either. In silence they could be equals for a moment, a laughable notion had he spoken it out loud. They would never be equals. She, a highborn’s get, and he, a serving dog to the Lannisters. They were as different as different could be, and she would never be his, so why then was he here? Why he was torturing himself? He ought to climb back onto his feet, scoff at her, and leave at once.

 

He did no such thing.

 

Sandor often wondered what sort of things she prayed about when she came out here to seek the comfort of the Old Gods of her father. Did she pray to be reunited with her only living bastard brother, or did she pray to be whisked away from this hell that was once her home by some ravishing young knight? Another preposterous and fanciful notion, he thought, and a raspy strain of laughter escaped through his ruined lips as the thought crossed his mind.

 

“What is so funny, ser?” Sansa asked at length with an unsteady voice, breaking the silence with her tightly controlled courtesy.

 

“This,” he replied roughly. Sandor stared forward at the weirwood with its bleeding eyes, weeping red sap. “Us,” he added, quieter than before.

 

“There is no us,” Sansa whispered to him, though her conviction was weak and he did not believe her for a second.

 

Sandor chuckled deeply, steel scraping against stone. “Remember when I told you we’re all liars and every one of us is better than you?” he asked her, turning to look at Sansa. “It’s still true, little bird.”

 

Sansa would not meet his gaze, holding her chin higher and swallowing visibly against a lump in her throat. She refused to answer him there, so he had to say something else as he looked onward at the weirwood tree once more. He might as well be forward and to the point.

 

“Why the Kingslayer?” Sandor inquired as blunt as possible. “Tell me why.”

 

“At least he does not violate prisoners,” Sansa said below her breath, her voice pained with the admittance, and he knew. He knew what had driven her to bed the Kingslayer. Perhaps there were promises of an escape from this life and being whisked away from the Imp, but Sandor knew the true reason.

 

She had heard somehow of what had happened between him and the ironborn woman, Asha Greyjoy, who was being held in captivity within one of the prison cells below Winterfell. He had tried to help her escape. However, her men had threatened the lives of Sansa and Brandon in their attempt to flee, and they had paid dearly for the offense. Sandor had wounded one and killed the other, but they never would have gotten the chance to get near Sansa or Brandon in the first place if it hadn’t been for Sandor.

 

That was his fault. Sansa and Brandon’s lives would have never been put in danger if he had let things be and let Asha rot in her cell.

 

Though what had happened between him and Asha had been an accident on his part, Sandor never thought Sansa capable to be bothered by it or jealous of him with another woman. They had spoken to vows to each other. They had made no promises. They had shared a bed one night together, and then she had bedded her husband, the Imp, afterwards, but despite all of that, something was still there. Something had always been there.

 

For all of his scorn towards vows and promises, Sandor had still been hurt at the sight of Sansa on her back beneath the Kingslayer. Some hypocrite that made him, he thought bitterly.

 

“Is that why you bedded him?” Sandor rasped, his breath coming out like smoke against the cool winter air before his face. “To get back at me?”

 

Sansa rose from her place on the ground, lifting her skirts with the motion, and stepped back from him. When Sandor looked up at her, he saw the ache and the betrayal behind the cracking visage of her smooth and beautiful face, pouring out all of the emotion she had been bottling up inside of her for gods knew how long.

 

“You bed me for one night,” Sansa threw back at him, though her voice was calm despite its gentle shaking, “and you think me your woman? You may do as you please, but I may not? You turn me away, and expect me to have _no_ one beyond you?”

 

Sandor stood up from the ground as well, a towering dark figure over her smaller blue and grey hued frame. Sansa shrunk away from him as though she was afraid of his reaction, and Sandor froze in place. His fists clenched at his sides. After so long a time, she still feared him.

 

“What did he promise you?” Sandor asked further. He wanted to hear it straight from her lips.

 

“To take me _away_ ,” Sansa said, though it took all of her willpower to force the words out of her mouth. “To do for me what you would not. He said he could—”

 

“He lied,” Sandor told her, cutting her off.

 

Sansa froze in place, her mouth hanging slightly open. “What?”

 

“He lied to you,” Sandor repeated, looking her dead in the eyes. He took two slow steps forward with care to not frighten her away from him again. “Cersei sent him to bed you to hurt me. His promises are empty. He’s taking you nowhere.”

 

Sansa’s look of disbelief increased tenfold until her lips were trembling, and she shook her head at him. “No,” she whispered, “no, it’s not true—”

 

Sandor closed the distance between them. He took her by the chin, lifting her face upwards to meet his gaze. “All of them liars,” he repeated, his voice a quiet rasp, “and all of them better than you.”

 

Sansa blinked her eyes, and a single tear escaped down her left cheek. She pulled away from him, still shaking her head as if she could not believe his words, and turned around in a flurry of skirts to rush back towards the castle. Sandor watched as she fled from him, wondering what was going through her head. There would be no rescue for her from the Kingslayer. No boat or great ship to take her away. Besides, how would the golden lion steal his brother’s wife without anyone noticing? It was an absurd notion, but Sansa had fallen for it all the same, a naïve little bird as she had been back in King’s Landing.

 

Setting his jaw firmly in place to prevent his own face from giving away his emotion, Sandor tore through the grounds of the godswood and into the castle. His feet led him down the same well-worn path towards the dungeons deep below, for he sought out the very prisoner who had placed him in this mess with Sansa at the onset. Had it not been for her cunning or his foolishness, nothing would have happened between the two of them and Sansa would have not fell pray to the Kingslayer’s lies so easily. In fact, she might not have believed them at all.

 

Some part of her allowed herself to, though, and it was all because of him.

 

Sandor relieved the usual guard of his duty, offering to take up the watch for a moment, and approached her cell. Asha was wide awake, sitting on her cot, and she gazed up at him as he stood before the bars. She looked dirtier than normal and in a worse state as well. Sandor wondered how they were treating her, and then found he didn’t care.

 

“Who have you been speaking to?” Sandor demanded, and Asha narrowed her eyes at his question.

 

“What are you talking about?” she threw back, though she just sounded bored.

 

“How does Sansa know what happened down here?”

 

Asha’s eyes gleamed in the darkness, and she rose from her cot to approach the cell bars without getting too close. Asha made sure to keep enough distance between them that Sandor couldn’t reach through the bars and grab her. “Oh, is it ‘Sansa’ now?” she teased him. “Not ‘Lady Sansa’ as it should be for a low dog like you?”

 

“Answer the question,” he growled.

 

Asha’s expression hardened at his command. “I haven’t spoken to anyone,” she said. “Maybe you ought to look to yourself or your guards because what reason do I have to repeat it? It gives me nothing, dog.”

 

Sandor leaned closer to the bars. “Be that as it may, something had been said,” he snarled.

 

“Is there trouble in paradise?” Asha asked him further, lowering her voice to a whisper as she leaned forward, too. There was a mocking tone to her voice despite a false hint of surprise in it as well. “So sad. Truly, I insist. The dog and his mistress, separated at last—”

 

Sandor slammed his hand against her cell, rattling the bars, and Asha jumped back from them. “I will have you dead, woman,” he said with a deadly calm.

 

“I’d like to see you try,” she snarled right back at him. Asha spat at Sandor, but he pulled back in time for the spittle to hit his chest instead of his face, and he glowered at her before he stormed from the dungeons towards the darkened corridors above them. He tore through the castle with such a force that anyone in his way quickly moved out of it, and some of them he even shoved out of his way. Sandor had one destination in mind and one purpose.

 

He sought out his lord, the little lord Tyrion, and found him in the Great Hall. Sandor marched right up to the little lord to demand an audience with him. Lord Tyrion appeared confused at first, but then he sent away the servants and maids he had fawning at his side and looked up at Sandor to meet the taller man’s burning gaze.

 

“What is it, Clegane?” Lord Tyrion asked him, though his voice sounded on edge for the answer he might receive in response to that question, especially given the cold fury that radiated off of Sandor in that moment.

 

Sandor knew what he had to ask, though. He had come here with that specific purpose in mind, and the only person who could grant the request was Lord Tyrion. Besides, that bitch meant nothing to them. Her father would not ransom her back. She had no valuable information to hand over to them regarding the ironborn’s movements, and her life measured up to nothing but a pointless waste down in the dungeons of Winterfell. She ate their food and breathed their air, and she gave nothing back in return but trouble.

 

Some smaller part of Sandor also thought that if he did this, he could prove to Sansa that Asha meant nothing to him. Either way, Sandor managed to say the words despite the deep feeling of misgiving it gave him.

 

“We need to execute Lady Asha Greyjoy,” Sandor proposed to Lord Tyrion.

 

He knew, once he said the words, there was no going back.


	8. If I Said I Loved You I’d Be Lying

 

Lord Tyrion’s opposing eyes, one green and one black, narrowed with a look of suspicion as he stared back at Sandor. His forehead wrinkled as well, and Lord Tyrion raised his chin shortly upon hearing such a request. Sandor knew the Imp thought something odd and out of place about his proposal, or he wouldn’t have that bloody questioning gaze in his beady, mismatched eyes.

 

There was a lengthy silence in the hall until Tyrion’s face slightly relaxed, and he glanced away from Sandor, lowering his gaze, though the quizzical expression did not leave his face. Finally, Lord Tyrion tugged once upon his left sleeve, once upon his right, and then he straightened both arms at his sides and lifted his chin once more to Sandor.

 

“No, I think not,” Lord Tyrion disagreed. “Lady Asha Greyjoy is a very valuable prisoner to us. She is a noblewoman of House Greyjoy, and she is also the only surviving child of Lord Balon Greyjoy. We have no feasible reason to execute her.”

 

“Her and her _squid_ have caused us nothing but trouble,” Sandor growled at him. His anger surged beneath the surface, fueling each of his words. “They escaped before, and they threatened your wife and your babe. Put a knife to both their throats. What happens when they escape a second time? You’ve put a bloody _army_ of them under our feet.”

 

Tyrion’s face twisted as an indignant look flared behind his eyes.

 

“There will _be_ no second time, Clegane,” Tyrion said icily, “and Lady Asha will not be executed on a whim. She is my prisoner. Not yours.” Lord Tyrion stepped forward, looking up at Sandor with a cold expression. Despite the vast difference in height, the dwarf held himself as if he stood a foot taller than Sandor. “Do not presume to give me orders again,” he added in a quieter voice than before, and then the little lord turned away and waddled past Sandor, leaving him alone in the Great Hall with nothing more than the presence of a few distant servants.

 

Night fell upon the castle, and Sandor found himself in another drunken stupor, wandering the halls like an aimless dog, after the evening meal in the Great Hall. He had imbibed more wine than the damn dwarf that night, and the dwarf had claimed a whole barrel all by himself, though he pissed most of it into a chamber pot throughout the evening. If he hadn’t, there was no way the Imp would have been able to finish the barrel.

 

Despite the deepening snows of an endless winter that fell upon the land around them and the freezing winds that grew harsher with each passing day, there had been much merrymaking in the Great Hall that night. There had been tales told at supper of a great victory against the ironborn on the banks of the Stony Shore. Many of their ships had been captured and put to use for the Northern army, and most of the ironborn had been slaughtered upon the shoals of the coastline, their blood left to mingle with the salty waters against the rocks. Sandor had not been a part of that fight. It had been a sudden attack in the middle of the night, and yet still the ironborn had not won.

 

They did not stop trying, though. They would die trying to take over the North, and Lord Tyrion’s men would keep sending the ironborn back out to sea to their watery graves.

 

In his aimless traveling down dark corridors lit with flickering torchlight, Sandor saw a familiar figure dressed in shimmering blue by one of the windowless castle alcoves. Two of her ladies were in her company, one on either side of her. Lady Sansa did not often wander the hallways alone after the two ironborn prisoners had escaped their cells and held a knife to her and her babe’s throats. She walked often with her maids.

 

Sandor scowled heavily. Useless women, they were. They had sewing experience and no knowledge of how to fight. They would not be able to protect Lady Sansa if some brute of a killer decided to take her hostage again—or worse, kill her.

 

He strode down the hallway towards them, his heavy boots making deep echoes throughout the hall. All three of the ladies looked up, and upon seeing Sandor’s face, the Lady Sansa raised her chin in a slight gesture as well as one of her hands to dismiss her ladies.

 

“You may go,” she told them, looking directly at Sandor. Her eyes never left him, even as her ladies parted from her side and disappeared down the hallway.

 

“Lady Sansa,” Sandor greeted her, though he did not bow his head. His words might have been slurred as well, for Sansa’s forehead wrinkled as she heard him speak. She must have realized his drunken state by the way he spoke. However, she made no move to walk away from him or dismiss him from her sight.

 

Instead, there almost seemed to be a gleam of pity within her eyes. The glowing torchlight danced over her face, giving him only a partial view of her expression. Her face was clear, though. Clear as a summer’s rain. It looked honest to Sandor in a way he had not seen from her in a very long time, and it brought a palpable ache to his chest, his heart thumping hard inside of his ribcage.

 

“Sandor,” she called him with a gentle voice, and it was like a melody to his ears. His chest hurt all the more because of it. “How are you this evening?”

 

After a moment of silent reflection, Sandor shifted on his feet, swaying slightly, and answered her.

 

“How do I look, Lady Sansa?” he asked her, his voice deep but also hoarser than usual because of the wine. His choice of addressing her as Lady Sansa twice in a row brought a look of confusion to her pretty features in the firelight. Her mouth parted slightly as she stared at him, and she tilted her head to the side.

 

“Drunk,” Sansa answered at length, though it came as barely a whisper.

 

He let out a gruff, barking laugh at the absurdity of it all. Across from him, Sansa hardened her expression and glared at him.

 

“Do you find something funny, _ser_?” she asked, and the bite of her tongue lashed at his cheek like a slap. His laugh abruptly cut off, and Sandor stared back at her. Sansa had only called him ‘ser’ to irritate him. She knew he hated that bloody word, hated being _called_ that bloody word, so she had chosen it on purpose just for the effect.

 

The corner of his ruined mouth twitched, and Sandor strode up to her. She took a single step back, leaning away from him, but Sandor grasped her by the upper arm to make sure she didn’t try running away from him. Sansa cried out, though, as if his grip on her alone had twisted her arm at an ugly angle—but he had done no such thing, so he let her go, startled by her reaction.

 

Sansa’s hand flew to her upper arm just beneath her shoulder, gently clasping it as she grimaced in the dark. She bent forward as if drawing into herself, her head bowed, though her face was still visible to him from the side.

 

“I no more than _touched_ you—” he growled.

 

“It wasn’t you,” Sansa said quietly, raising her eyes to his.

 

He had not been expecting that answer. Sandor narrowed his eyes at her, mouth and nose twitching as he felt the beginnings of a rage boil beneath the surface.

 

“What do you mean?” he asked.

 

Sansa straightened herself until she stood once more at full height, and then she removed her hand from her arm. Gingerly, she tugged up the sleeve of her long winter gown until her pale arm was exposed in the firelight. Only her arm wasn’t pale but bruised to a dark purple and red splotch that covered a good few inches of her skin with an irregular shape. It looked as if someone had struck her.

 

Sandor’s mind went into a blank rage. “Who _did_ this?” he demanded. He would kill the bastard. Sandor would drive a sword straight through the man’s belly, gut him like a pig ready for slaughter, and then string him up by his own insides outside the gates of Winterfell to let everyone know _this_ was what happened to any poor bastard who laid his hand on Lady Sansa.

 

Her eyes grew wide with shock at his strong reaction, her mouth falling open in surprise. Sansa glanced down at her arm as if it was not that important to make a fuss over, but her mouth closed and her lips trembled slightly together.

 

“The ironborn,” Sansa whispered to him, “the ones who escaped that night and . . . ”

 

Sandor knew what had happened on that night. He didn’t have to be told again. After all, he had been the one to stop it from going any further. It had been him who had saved her and Brandon, him who had killed one of the men that held a knife to her and her babe’s throat. Only one was still alive, rotting in a dungeon cell deep below the soil of Winterfell.

 

He stepped forward, closing the short distance between their bodies. His shadow loomed over her because of the light, casting Sansa’s face in darkness.

 

“I’ll take care of it,” he told her, his voice a quiet rasp.

 

Sansa stared at his face as if she did not know what to believe, but Sandor turned away from her before anything more could be said about it. He trudged through the hallways with heavy boots and a staggering gait. Sandor was not going to do anything tonight. It was too late for a good opportunity, and he was too drunk. His mind was made up on what he was going to do, though. Even if she wanted to, she was not going to be able to talk him out of it.

 

A few days later, Sandor stood in the shadows, waiting for the guard on duty in the dungeon to walk off for a piss. When the guard slunk off for a moment alone, Sandor made his way to the cell that held the other ironborn from that night. He was just a boy who had wiped his arse on summer’s grass all of his life, soft and small like a woman. His name was Tristifer.

 

“You want out of here, boy?” Sandor asked him, and Tristifer glanced up with a look of alarm at who stood out of his cell door.

 

“Why?” Tristifer asked him right back, willing to entertain the question, even if he was afraid of it.

 

“Because I have got the key,” Sandor told him, holding it up, “if you want it.”

 

“This is a trick,” Tristifer said warily, and he began to shake his head. “You just want me to say it, and then let me take it, and you’ll beat me for it and lock me back up.”

 

“Sounds like a waste of my bloody time,” Sandor deadpanned. “I have got better things to do than this. You want to get out of this cell, boy, or do you want to rot here? There is a ship on the Stony Shore. Catch a boat ride home. Get out of this place while you can.”

 

Tristifer seemed to be debating it in his head.

 

“Quick, boy,” he snapped. “I haven’t got all night. The guard is taking a piss. If it takes you longer to think than him to piss, you’re a dead man.”

 

Quickly, the boy scrambled up to his feet, reaching through the bars for the key. “I’ll take it,” Tristifer blurted out, and Sandor gave him the key.

 

Sandor took a few steps back as Tristifer twisted the key in the lock and a _click_ sounded in the emptiness, the cell door swinging open. The key fell from the lock as it swung outward, and Tristifer rushed out of the cell, but he stopped for just a moment to look at Sandor.

 

“Thank you,” Tristifer said.

 

Sandor said nothing in return.

 

As Tristifer hurried down the dungeon hall, Sandor gave him a short head start. Glancing down at the key on the ground, Sandor bent down to scoop it up. He pocketed the key, and then he dropped an old, rusted lock pick from inside of his pocket onto the floor outside of the boy’s cell.

 

Then, he drew out his sword with the humming sound of metal in the air.

 

“ _Guards_!” Sandor bellowed, his deep voice ringing against the walls and echoing back at him. “ _Escaped prisoner_!”

 

Tristifer stumbled all of a sudden, nearly losing his balance on his feet as he tried to turn around while still moving. He had to catch himself to prevent a fall, but he was no longer running now, which was the stupid part.

 

Sandor advanced on him, sword drawn, and Tristifer backed away and stumbled again.

 

“Wait!” Tristifer protested, holding up his hands. “You said—”

 

Sandor grinned in the torchlight, his face no doubt a grotesque sight for the boy.

 

“I lied,” he said, still grinning, and then he charged the boy. Tristifer tried to run, but Sandor drove his sword into Tristifer’s back. The boy tumbled to the ground at Sandor’s feet, and the way he fell seemed to take forever, even though it only happened in the span of a few seconds. Dust rose in a swirl about his body as Sandor bent over him. Sandor grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and turned him onto his back upon the ground.

 

Tristifer stared up at him, a dazed look of shock in his eyes as he lay there dying.

 

“But . . . you said . . . ” the boy managed to speak, his voice barely even there.

 

“I say a lot of things,” Sandor told him, and he lifted his sword with both hands on the hilt and the blade pointed downward at Tristifer’s belly. He gave the boy a good moment to look at the weapon that was going to finish him, and then he drove the sword straight down—right into Tristifer’s belly.

 

Tristifer gasped as the blade went through him, gushing dark fluid through his clothes and onto the floor below his body. A pool of blood formed beneath him while his bottom lip tried to move, as if he meant to speak, before the life left his eyes. His body finally stilled, his head falling to the side against the dirty stones. Sandor watched him in silence, and then he slowly drew out his sword from the boy’s belly.

 

They cleaned up the mess that night, and the next day Lord Tyrion called Sandor to the Great Hall to congratulate him on stopping an escaped prisoner before the man could hurt anyone. Sandor listened to the whole speech, but he tuned it out. His mouth twitched at its ruined corner, and he wondered why they had to make such bloody spectacles out of these things until Lord Tyrion’s final words rang out through the hall.

 

“Well done, Clegane,” Lord Tyrion commended him, and the dwarf bowed his head in Sandor’s direction.

 

Sandor stared long and hard at the Imp. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Lady Sansa seated beside her dwarf husband, her eyes on Sandor. Her hand held to her chest, right above her heart.

 

Sandor raised his chin, narrowing his eyes at the Imp.

 

“I didn’t do it for you,” Sandor rasped aloud, drawing the whole babbling crowd surrounding them to a sudden and silent standstill. Even the little lord, Tyrion, looked to be taken aback at such a bold declaration in front of so many people. Without saying anything more to the dwarf, Sandor turned his back on the high table and walked in long strides towards the exit.

 

All of the Great Hall watched on in silence as he strode out of it.


	9. A Knife in the Dark

Sandor slept better at night with the other ironborn prisoner now dead instead of sleeping inside of a cell. While he had no idea which of the dead men had given Sansa the bruise, it no longer mattered to him anymore. Sandor could have cared less. As long as neither of them could ever do such a thing to her again, he was satisfied with what he had done. It had been a bad wound for Sansa, especially if it took this long for the bruise to heal itself. If they were bad enough, Sandor had seen them last for months. Before he had seen the one on Sansa’s upper arm, it had been well over a month since the ironborn had gotten out of their cells on a botched escape attempt thanks to him.

 

One of those men Sandor had killed must have grabbed Sansa roughly, and then either hit her or thrown her with force into a wall or against a sharp corner. All it took was a strong enough impact to cause a bruise to blossom like that one. As he made his way through the warm and darkened hallways of the castle, Sandor wondered how Sansa had been faring as of late. He wondered if her bruise had healed itself or if it still hurt her. He would have to find an opportunity to ask her. Maesters, he knew, could not control internal wounds. It was impossible. All she could do was wait it out, but Sandor feared it getting worse, even if it was only her arm.

 

He steered himself towards Brandon’s rooms in the hopes that Sansa might be there. She often went to Brandon’s rooms alone to spend time with the boy away from the duties of her daily life, and it was in those few and unlikely moments that Sandor received opportunities to talk to Sansa in private. All of the castle around them had ears, but as long as Sansa had taken the time to dismiss the wet nurse from Brandon’s chambers, then all would be quiet and safe there between them.

 

Sandor reached the doors and opened one of them. Leaning his head around the corner, he noticed the room was dark and empty. Brandon’s bed was empty, and there was no one in sight. Frowning to himself, Sandor pulled the door shut and turned around to leave.

 

The hallways were ever so quiet. As he was on duty, he was dressed in his armor with a sword hanging at his side and a long cloak with a fur trim fixed across his shoulders. Fur was a style of the North, a style he had needed to take time to grow accustomed to upon coming here. The clothes were thicker than what he was used to, and the armor felt sturdier but lighter. Most of it was leather instead of metal, which helped keep the men warm rather than freeze them to death in this bloody weather.

 

After much traveling that brought him to the lower levels of the castle, Sandor began to find the silence disconcerting. It was quiet, but too quiet. Slowing his gait, Sandor put his hand upon the hilt of his sword and listened carefully to the silence. He was ill at ease. For all of the prisoners and trouble they had had as of late, he expected to hear noise and blabbering, not utter silence.

 

As he stepped with measured care towards the end of the hall, Sandor looked to the left that was within clearer view to him. The torches flickered in the darkness of the hallways, but there was no movement outside of the dancing flames. All was still and empty. Turning his head the other way, he glanced down the right. Still, there was nothing but the flames to fill the shadows. Narrowing his eyes in annoyance at himself, Sandor released his grip from his sword and returned his hand back to his side. There was nothing here but his wild imagination.

 

And then, there was a blade suddenly against his throat—his throat, unprotected by any armor and exposed to the elements, metal, fire, and hatred.

 

Her grip was tight and sure, her hand steady.

 

“So,” came Asha’s familiar voice from behind him, “you wanted me executed? Executed like a common dog? I ought to slit your throat right now and be done with it—”

 

“Go on, then,” Sandor urged her, a raspy laugh escaping his lips. “Kill me if you have the guts to do it and quit talking.”

 

There was a moment of hesitation before she answered, a pause to think.

 

“Which way is the exit?” Asha asked, and then she gripped his hair harder, dug the sharp metal in deeper. It drew blood. Sandor could smell it in the heat of the torches burning through the air. “Tell me, and maybe I’ll spare your life.”

 

“Tell you?” He laughed. “Tell you, and have you escape with me in the hallway? Some poor bugger spotting us both? You think I’ll die quicker by the blade of the Imp than your sweet little knife? Go _on_ ,” Sandor urged her again, his voice going deeper. “Cut my throat and find your own way out, she-devil.”

 

Asha was silent again, weighing her options. They weren’t many.

 

“Tell me which way is the exit,” she said, her voice more yielding this time. “I’ve got no reason to kill you. You haven’t managed to kill me yet. Maybe those were just rumors I heard of you asking the Imp to kill the kraken beast of a woman in the dungeon. Maybe I can forgive a rumor . . . ”

 

“They weren’t rumors,” Sandor admitted. “Every last word is true.”

 

Asha paused again. Her knife seemed to falter. Sandor slowly moved his hand closer to the hilt of his sword. Before he could pull it from its sheath, though, he knew Asha would draw that blade across his neck and bleed him out like a pig.

 

“ _Why_?” Asha ground out from between her teeth.

 

“Why not?” Sandor offered. “You have caused me nothing but trouble since you arrived—”

 

“ _You_ never left me alone—” Asha shot back.

 

Sandor chuckled deep in his throat. “Call it what you will,” he told her. “What is done is done.”

 

Asha was silent, and his hand drew closer to his sword.

 

“If you were going to cut me, woman, you would have done it by now,” Sandor rasped quietly. “Take that blade off my throat, and we’ll talk. It’s hard to speak with your metal against my neck.”

 

At first, there was nothing. Her silence remained constant, and her blade did not falter from his throat. However, a moment passed, and Asha must have realized her time was growing short. Any moment, they would discover she was missing from her cell and send a whole search party out to find her. It was just a matter of time, and she did not have much of it.

 

Slowly, the blade slide away from his throat at the same time as she backed away from him. Asha moved quickly, getting herself a safe distance away from Sandor and the length of his sword. Sandor turned around slower than she took back her blade, turning on the heels of his boots to face her in the dark. His cloak swirled about his feet, settling once more against the dirty stones beneath his boots as he stood before her with a piercing gaze aimed at the Lady Greyjoy.

 

It was perhaps the first time he ever thought of her as the Lady Greyjoy. She was a noble, all right. She held herself with pride and dignity, but she had the rough edges of a pirate in each movement and step and word that she spoke. She was a force to be reckoned with, and there weren’t many like her in this world.

 

She reminded him of himself in that way.

 

He wasn’t going to kill her for it.

 

“Take that hall,” Sandor told her, nodding behind himself to the left. “Go straight to the end and take another left. At the end, take a right and then another right. It will lead you to a set of doors on the left. The last one on the left side will take you outside.” His eyes fell to her attire. “You won’t blend in looking like that, though.”

 

Sandor unclasped his cloak, removed it from his shoulders, and threw it towards Asha. She caught it deftly with the hand not holding the blade. Asha looked up at him, and there was confusion in her eyes as if she didn’t quite understand why he was doing all of this for her.

 

“Won’t they know it’s your cloak?” she asked.

 

“Bugger what they think,” Sandor snapped. “Take it and get out. Go home.” As he said the last word, he tilted his head back to the left again. Sandor was silent for a few seconds, and then he narrowed his eyes at Asha. “But remember,” he added in a low voice, “I spared your life. We cross paths again, don’t you forget that.”

 

Asha seemed to understand him. Quickly, she placed the cloak on her shoulders and hooked the clasp in the front. She then pulled the hood over her head, which obscured her face in shadow.

 

“I won’t forget this,” she said.

 

With that, she walked in the direction he had told her to go, walking so as to not draw attention to herself.

 

Sandor let her go, and he didn’t try to stop her.

 

As he walked off in the opposite direction of Asha, he was surrounded in silence for some minutes until a clamor could be heard echoing through the castle walls. They had no doubt discovered her escape, but Sandor stopped in the hallway to listen to the noise rather than to join it. Maybe she had gotten far enough to not be caught. If she was lucky, she had already made it to the gate.

 

But it was long walk in the snow with no provisions. He wondered if she would even survive the journey. She was made for the sea, not for the Northern winters.

 

Eventually, Sandor made his way to the most likely area where the Imp would be at this hour if not in his bed, and that was the Great Hall. The dwarf couldn’t get enough of his drinking. Sandor wondered when the little lord would become a glutton as well as a drunkard. A snort erupted from his nostrils. He was one to talk about such things.

 

As Sandor entered the doors of the Great Hall, he saw a group of men standing near Lord Tyrion and a young guard in particular hurriedly telling Lord Tyrion a story. His heavy boots strode near, echoing throughout the hall, and the young man turned his head at the sound. Sandor spotted a look of shock on the young man’s face, and quickly, he raised his finger to point at Sandor.

 

“That was the man, my lord!” the young man shouted nervously. “That was the man! I saw him! That was him, the one who helped Lady Asha escape! He did nothing to stop her, my lord, and he gave her the cloak off his own _back_!”

 

It was damning evidence to be spoken aloud in that moment, for Sandor’s cloak was not on his shoulders. It was on Lady Asha as she fled out into the wilderness beyond the walls of Winterfell.

 

All of the men surrounding Tyrion immediately drew their swords, and Sandor responded by drawing his as well.

 

“Sandor,” Lord Tyrion said slowly, and he made a motion with his hand as if to urge Sandor to lower his sword. “Please, put down your weapon. Guards,” the Imp called out louder. “Put down your weapons as well. I want no bloodshed in this hall. We have had quite enough of that already.”

 

Reluctantly, the guards put away their swords. Sandor was not so willing to put his down.

 

“Sandor,” Lord Tyrion continued in that same voice, “we must investigate this. Don’t you agree?”

 

“Investigate _what_?” Sandor growled back, his grip tightening on his sword hilt.

 

“This young man’s claim,” Tyrion said. “He could be lying,” he added, cutting his eyes towards the now very terrified looking accuser, “ _but_ isn’t it fair to prove that through an investigation into his claims rather than an immediate dismissal of them?”

 

Sandor knew the Imp’s game. They meant to lock him up and execute him. Well, he would die with a sword in his hands or not at all.

 

They wouldn’t get him so easily.

 

However, at the far end of the hall, the great wide doors swung open and Lady Sansa came rushing in with her winter’s best wrapped around her frame to keep her warm, her cheeks flushed pink beneath her dark woolen fur-trimmed hood. Sansa brought one of her gloved hands to her chest, drawing in a sudden deep breath to see the scene before her.

 

Sandor’s gaze locked with hers across the distance as her mouth remained open, and he saw as her lip trembled only slightly. Sansa’s eyes misted over with tears that he knew she would not shed openly, but they were there—the fear of losing him, the father to her child, if he resisted right now instead of giving in to their questioning.

 

Slowly, he made a decision, and slowly, he lowered his sword. It clattered to the floor of the Great Hall, echoing loudly within the cavernous silence.

 

“Seize him,” Lord Tyrion ordered.


	10. Whisper Sweet Whisper

 

Inside of the cell in the deepest levels of Winterfell, it was warm. There was no chill here; the cold did not reach so deep into the earth. Instead, it was warm like the heat of summer, and Sandor needed no cloak or extra clothes to keep warm. He ended up stripping off what thick garments he had been wearing when they had locked him up, throwing them onto the dirty cot for cleanliness and comfort. No one had come to visit him for days. There had been no questioning yet. They had left him here in the darkness as if they meant for him to rot here. His cell was barely lit but for the flickering torchlight beyond the bars, and he soured over his thoughts day and night until the time when they would come for him.

 

His hair had become greasy and dirty, and his head itched. He scratched it from time to time, but it didn’t help. It made it worse. Most of the time, Sandor sat in the dark with nothing to do, no one to talk to, and nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. He wondered if the little lord would choose to kill him, and then he wondered if the dwarf would make it quick and painless or if he would drag it out for his sick pleasure. Those thoughts embittered his temperament too quickly, though, and he turned them aside.

 

Sandor had the occasional visit from a guard to bring him food, but aside from that, there was no one else. He had ever bothered to make friends in this frozen hellhole, and there were only two people here that even mattered to a man like him. It was too dangerous for her to visit, though. Sandor never expected to see her face. Not down here, and not anywhere. She had her own life to worry about, and he had squandered his to this end. She had Brandon to worry of, too. She had to keep the boy safe. He was all that mattered now.

 

Time passed too slowly in a cell, and he could only count the days by the amount of food bowls they brought him. One in the morning, and one at night. Sandor had counted nine bowls so far. He was on his fifth day in the dungeon, wasting away in the dark like some common beggar thief who had been caught stealing. They kept him barely fed. The bowls they served were big enough to fill a child’s belly. Sandor was lucky if it stopped the pains in his stomach. The next man who brought him food, Sandor would strangle him if it meant a chance to escape.

 

He heard footsteps echoing down the passageway towards him, which was rare but for the guards who walked this area. Sandor remained seated on the ground, leaning his back and head against the wall. He would not show eagerness for any visitor. If they wanted to talk to him, they would were going to have to make the effort first. He would give them nothing easily.

 

Sandor saw the torch blinding his vision before he saw anything else. He had to raise his hand to shield his eyes from the glare. He was so used to the dark that the light seemed too bright. It was a heavily robed figure in brown, and a slender arm reached up to place the torch into one of the sconces. Sandor knew that arm. He knew that hand. When the figure lowered its arm and turned to face him, she pulled back the hood to reveal her familiar face and auburn hair.

 

Sansa knelt in the dirt before his cell, her hands clutching onto the bars.

 

He pushed himself away from the wall to reach her, his joints aching with each movement of his body from sitting in one position for too long. Gravel crunched beneath his feet and knees as he settled himself before the bars across from her. He could not help but wonder what madness had brought her down here to his cell like this.

 

“What are you doing here?” Sandor asked her, though his voice was scratchier and rougher than usual. The days of disuse had not been kind to it.

 

Sansa looked as though she had a will to say something, but it was as if she could not bring herself to say it. Her face appeared to be impassive, but her eyes were wide and full with her emotions, near bursting to the brim. “I have some news to tell of, my lord,” she managed to get out. Sandor bit his jaw down tight. The way she chose to address him was everything. He could read it in her voice, even if she didn’t want to say it out loud.

 

“What news,” he said back, bitterly, “Lady _Sansa_.”

 

She opened her mouth, but her breath hitched as she tried to speak. Sansa’s eyes wavered downward, fixing on a spot lower than their hands. “The Lady Asha,” she said softly, her voice carrying no echo. It was barely audible to him despite the distance of only few inches between their faces. Her eyes shot upward again. “They caught her.”

 

The corner of his mouth twitched on its ruined end, and his eyes narrowed in the dark. “Is that so?” he growled. “Did she squeal like a pig when they caught her? Tell me, _my lady_ , did she say I helped her escape that cell? Go on, then. Tell me. How many days have I got before they behead me in the snow in manner of your family?”

 

Sansa stared back at him, speechless, but her nervous flutters had left her. They had been replaced with a calmness that wasn’t there before. Her fingers loosened on the bars. “No,” she whispered, slowly shaking her head. Her gaze remained steady. “It was an unfair fight. They overpowered her, and . . . one of them killed her.”

 

Sansa was watching for his reaction, but he had none. Sandor hadn’t thought the kraken bitch would survive. The odds had been stacked against her the moment she made it outside of the castle. He should have told her to stay, but she would not have listened to him. She was dead for it now. Sandor felt his tight jaw finally loosen, but that was all the reaction he had to give.

 

“No one admitted who is responsible,” Sansa continued hesitantly, “and so Lord Tyrion cannot punish anyone for the crime. He is considering punishing them all, but . . . good men are hard to find in the winter.”

 

Sandor snorted with a small sense of amusement, looking away. “Good,” he said at last. “The bitch deserved it. He won’t kill them if he needs them, but a good shackle in the dungeon wouldn’t hurt. Might even change their minds.”

 

She was quiet for a moment. “I will make that suggestion to him, my lord.”

 

Sandor didn’t look back at her. “Don’t call me ‘my lord,’” he told her, but all of the bitterness was gone from his tone.

 

Through the bars, Sansa reached out for him. Her hand found his easily where he had laid it upon the ground amongst the dirt and broken bits of stone. Though it besmirched her precious and refined hands to reach out for him, Sansa clasped his hand by wrapping her fingers underneath his palm and pulling it closer to her. The bars separated them from each other, but the single touch was enough to make him think, or even hope, that he might find a way out of this place.

 

If he found a way out of this place, if he lived, he would save her like he should have done the first time she had asked him to. He would do it for her and for the babe if it meant a safer life for both of them. Maybe not a better one, but safe was better than dead. Safe was better than a traitor.

 

Safe was better than this.

 

Her thumb grazed over the rough skin of his knuckles like a gentle brush of silk, and Sandor closed his eyes to relish in her touch. When her hand pulled away from his, he opened his eyes, but he did not turn to look. Sandor watched as her shadow rose in the corner of his vision, and he saw as she took the torch from its sconce on the wall. Before he knew it, he was entrenched in darkness once more and her warmth was all but gone. Sunlight extinguished, and the cold crept in.

 

He had never noticed how empty his life was without her before.

 

Three more days passed by the counting of his bowls, and Sandor looked up in the same manner that he had upon Sansa’s arrival days prior. A new visitor came to visit him, standing before his cell with a torch in hand and a key in the other. The man was accompanied by three other men. Perhaps they expected a fight out of him, so they came prepared.

 

 _They’re smarter than they look_ , he thought with another twitch of the ruined corner of his mouth.

 

They came into his cell to shackle him before leading him down the corridors to the hall of the castle where they conducted their affairs of law and business. When he passed through the doors, Sandor noticed not many people were there in presence. The hall was scarcely filled at all, but Lord Tyrion sat on the seat of the Lady Sansa’s father and forefathers as if his plump little tail belonged there, his chin held high and his face smug. His beady little eyes glinted in the frost of winter’s light that poured in through the open windows, casting the whole hall in a subdued blue glow.

 

Lady Sansa sat beside the dwarf in her winter’s finest garb, a gown made of cloth of grey slashed with cloth of blue. It shimmered in the soft light. Above that, she wore a robe with white fur trim around its wide collar, at the ends of its sleeves, and at the very bottom hem that hung about her feet. Her hood was pulled back, revealing her beautiful red hair. Half of it was raised in a pile of curls atop her head, while the other half hung low in curls around her shoulders. Her blue eyes were warm, though, like summer seas.

 

“Sandor Clegane,” Lord Tyrion announced, and as he spoke, Sandor felt the two men on either side of him let go of his arms. He looked as well, and he saw them each take out a jingling set of keys from their pockets. “No evidence has been found against you,” Lord Tyrion continued, and each guard grasped Sandor by the forearm to hold him still as they twisted the keys in the locks of his shackles. Metal snapped back, freeing him from his cage, and the chains clattered to the stone floor beneath his feet.

 

Suddenly, even the air smelled better.

 

“Lady Asha killed a man in the yard and stole his cloak,” Lord Tyrion told him, “as well as robbed his pockets clean of any valuables before she escaped out of the North Gate and headed westward. No doubt she hoped to reach the shores before anyone could stop her and find a vessel to steer out of port, but our men chased her down. Unfortunately, she perished in the fight, taking three men with her.”

 

Sandor had barely heard a word that was spoken, but he had heard that last bit. He raised his dark eyes to Tyrion, and they gleamed with his anger.

 

“Unfortunate?” he snarled. “One less kraken in the sea sounds like a blessing.” His words were met with silence throughout the hall. No one dared to laugh at a jape about the dead daughter of a lord. She had been above their station in life, and even in death, she stood above them in honor and respect. Sandor nodded his head towards the little lord. “I told you,” he said, “we ought to have executed the bitch when we had her still in chains, but you didn’t give a shit to listen.”

 

They were bold words from a man who had just been in the dungeon for a week, but Lord Tyrion raised his chin even higher, his beady eyes narrowing at Sandor.

 

After a moment of silence, Lord Tyrion replied. “You’re right, Clegane,” he said, earning a shocked murmur from the crowd. Even Sandor was taken aback by his admittance. “Next time, I will take your counsel into higher consideration should you have a suggestion to make to me. You are free to go.” Lord Tyrion lifted his hand, waving it dismissively in Sandor’s direction.

 

The silence gave way to a bustle of conversation, and Lord Tyrion looked away to focus on what one of his advisor’s was telling him next to his ear.

 

Sandor moved his gaze to the dais beside Lord Tyrion.

 

In her seat beside her lord husband, Lady Sansa gazed back at him with a tender expression in her eyes and the softest of smiles upon her face. She dared, in this wide and open crowd, to smile like the gentle soul she once was all those years ago at the likes of him. After what had occurred in this room today, he would be a fool to think that she had nothing to do with it. If not for the Lady Sansa, he’d still be in that cell, rotting away.

 

Lowering his eyes, Sandor bowed his head in her direction.

 

When he raised his chin again, he did not look at her. Sandor would not dare, not again so soon. Let them think he was bowing his head graciously at his lord for sparing him his life. Sandor turned his back on his lord and lady, and he left the hall without sparing either one of them a second glance.

 

Sandor had made a promise, and he had work to do if he meant to keep it.


	11. Here’s Your Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** Originally, this was supposed to be part of the last chapter, but for narrative purposes, it worked better split up. I was going to merge it with the next chapter’s original layout, but again, it messed with the narrative given the quick topic change, so that gives this story one more extra chapter than originally planned! I hope you all enjoy this update. I am almost finished with this story as it doesn't have much further to go before it reaches its final conclusion. :)

 

The water in the washbasin had become grimy from all of the dirt he had worked to clean off of himself with the washrag. Eight days in the dungeon had turned it to a dark, cloudy mixture of muck brown. Sediments of soil and stone swirled in the basin as he rung out the washrag one last time and ran it beneath his arms to cleanse himself more thoroughly. Sandor was naked from head to toe as he stood before the washbasin, and his hair was dripping wet. A fire blazed in the coals to keep him warm, but even in the walls of Winterfell, it was ever warm because of the hot springs that ran through the walls.

 

Dropping the washrag into the dirty water with a splash, Sandor glanced over at the wall. After a moment of consideration, he took a step back from the basin and crossed the room with measured steps towards the wall. When he reached it, he held out his hand and laid his palm flat against the rough stone. It was warm as he suspected, even here in his room far from the lord’s quarters where it was said the springs ran the hottest in the castle. For some time, Sandor was lost in a daze with no thoughts until a knock on the door broke him from his reverie.

 

He glanced at the door, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. He might have glared, but he was too grateful to be free for that. Walking over to his bed, he grabbed a short throw blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped it securely around his waist before heading to the door.

 

When he opened it, his jaw loosened as his lips parted in shock.

 

Lady Sansa stared back at him, but she dipped her hooded head low and slipped past him into his room. Pushing his head out of the door and looking down the hallway both ways, Sandor tried to make sure no one had followed her here. He saw no faces, no bodies, no silhouettes, but he did not trust the darkness beyond his room. Quickly, Sandor shut his door, and barred it.

 

Turning to face her, he noticed she had made her way towards the burning coals. Sansa held out her hands over the fire, and then she reached up to pull back her hood, letting her hair spill free over the rough-spun dun fabric of her cloak. She glanced over her shoulder at him, a shy look in her eyes, before she turned her body around to face him fully.

 

“What are you doing here?” he asked her.

 

This was dangerous. She knew this was dangerous, and so soon after his release, it was downright folly. If someone had followed her here, then they were a dead man and a dead woman.

 

Seven hells, the dwarf might spare her for her beauty—if she was lucky.

 

Her eyes trailed down his bare chest, taking in the sight of him unclothed as he was, and Sandor felt the warmth of her eyes as they passed slowly over his skin. Her gaze was in admiration for his physique. He was a warrior, his body graced with thick muscles and the white slivers of scars borne from battle wounds and cuts and brawls. Some areas of skin were rougher and in worse shape than other places, but Sansa did not seem to mind. Her eyes drank him in keenly, and she had begun to move from her spot near the fireplace, her feet drawing her to him.

 

Sandor stood still as she came to him, and he remained still even as she lifted her hand and placed her palm gently against his chest. Sansa slowly ran her fingers through his chest hair, and then she let them fall lower still until they tickled one of his nipples. With a timid gaze and flushed cheeks, she looked up at him. Their eyes locked together, but her hand slid lower until it reached the blanket loosely wrapped around his waist. Sansa pulled on it, and he didn’t try to stop her. The fabric tumbled to the floor, leaving him bare before her.

 

Her gaze fell to his body, looking further, but her hand was not so venturous as to take him on in other ways. As rough as he could have been, as he had been in the past with her, Sandor found himself in a state of vulnerability that he never remembered feeling before in her presence, save maybe once. His hand, big and rough though it was, was gentle as it touched the side of her face and grazed her cheek, and his lips, ruined though they were, closed in on hers in a kiss with the softest possible kiss.

 

Sansa kissed him back with the same measure of gentleness, and after the longest moment of standing together, they stumbled their way towards the bed. Sandor helped her to remove her cloak, the gown, and her undergarments, and when he had Sansa below him on the bed, he treated her the way he should have the first time they shared this intimacy. He was careful with her and slow, and when her nails raked across his back and her thighs squeezed him tight, he quickened each thrust until he had to drown out her cries with his mouth over hers to prevent the whole of the castle hearing them in the middle of their lovemaking.

 

Afterwards, as they lay side by side, Sandor ran his fingers through her hair with Sansa curled against him and thought back on his memories in the dungeon. He should have taken her away from this place before she ever had to sully her bed with that dwarf. That little monster did not deserve her, and Sandor could not bear the thought of sharing Sansa with him. His hand stilled against her head.

 

“Sansa,” he said low, and she stirred beside him, lifting her chin and blinking her eyes open. She looked at him for a moment before she smiled ever so softly.

 

“Yes?” she asked.

 

“I should have taken you away from this place a long time ago,” Sandor told her, finding the words hard to get out. They wanted to stick to the roof of his mouth rather than come out, and he had to force them. “It’s not too late,” he said, turning to look at her. “I can take you from here. We can flee together, you and me. We’ll get out. Go east, and find a boat. Take a passage over sea. Get away from here. Get away from kings and queens, ice and winter, fire and snows. Let it all fall down on itself in a pile of ashes as long as I get you out of here.”

 

Sansa stared at him, uncertainty shining in the back of her eyes. They flitted back and forth across his face, looking panicked and afraid. “What about my child?” she asked him in a whisper. “What about Brandon? He will not understand. He will cry. He will get us caught, and I cannot leave him.”

 

“We’ll bring him with us,” Sandor said. “Give him something to help him sleep.”

 

“Deceive him?” she asked, her voice wavering.

 

Sandor could not stop himself from saying what was already on his mind. “Is he not already deceived?” he shot back.

 

Sansa’s gaze somehow hardened and then softened at his claim, and then she let it go just as easily as he had said it. Lowering her head to his chest right above the steady drum of his heartbeat, Sansa also placed her hand on his chest. “He’ll come looking for us,” she whispered as one of her fingers curled around his chest hair again. She was referring to the little lord, her dwarf husband.

 

Sandor growled low in his throat. “Let him try,” he said. “He’ll never find us.”

 

Sansa was silent at first, and then she spoke. “He will search high and low for his son,” she murmured. “Nothing will stop him in that regard.”

 

“I will,” Sandor told her, “with my sword through his throat.”

 

Her hand clasped him closer, and he felt her eyes close as her lashes brushed his chest, though she said nothing more that night on the matter of escape with him. In the days following that fateful night, their trysts continued with no set routine to ensnare them in a trap with their lord. Their visits to each other happened at random times and sometimes in random places. Once they had made their bed in the uppermost planks of the stables, taking comfort in each other’s arms even as the cold air bit around them.

 

As he made plans for his escape with Sansa and Brandon, a new war threatened their doorsteps. A young woman with silvery-blonde hair had come from across the Narrow Sea with the name of Targaryen at her back, a swarming army on her heels, and three dragons flying above her head. She declared herself the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and she had claimed to take what was hers— _with fire and blood_. It would not be long before she burned King’s Landing to black ash and soot, and then she would spread her wings further, conquering the Seven Kingdoms with her dragons as her ancestors had done before her.

 

It was only a matter of time before she reached the North once she was done in the south, and then she would burn them in Winterfell, too.

 

Sandor poured over maps of the North as if he was doing it for his lord for battle strategies and escape routes for the women and children, but in reality it was for Sansa and Brandon. In those days as the dark descended upon the skies sooner and the cold drew quick to the bone, Sansa came to him one day with one of her hands on her belly and a quiver on her lips. Sandor looked up from his maps, but before anything could be said to explain the expression on her face, he paused because he knew what she was about to say without any words yet spoken.

 

Her eyes flitted left and then right, surveying their surroundings one last time before she opened her mouth. She had been crying, he saw. Her eyes were red.

 

“I am with child,” Sansa whispered, “again.”

 

There was a not a soul around them to hear her words. Sandor was alone when she came into the quarters, and unless someone was right on her heels, they were all alone.

 

Sandor’s eyes fell to the dagger on the corner of one of the maps upon the desk. He had been using it as a paperweight. The blade shone bright in the torchlight, glimmering dangerously.

 

“Am I the father?” he asked, staring at the blade.

 

Sansa was quiet at first, and then she told him, “I have not shared a bed with my lord husband since I have been with you.”

 

Sandor closed his eyes, lowering his chin to his chest. He let out a deep breath, at peace with the certainty that she could not deny him this one truth. Sansa was carrying his child, his son. Not the child of some other man. His peace, however, led to her becoming distraught.

 

Placing both of her hands on her stomach, she continued, “If I do not share my bed with him, Sandor, he will find out about—”

 

Just as quickly as she spoke the words, Sandor grasped the dagger on the table and stabbed downward into the desk hard, sinking its blade deep into the wood. The sudden motion startled Sansa, eliciting a gasp from her lips as she stepped back from him.

 

“You’ll _not_ share your bed with him,” Sandor told her, “or I’ll gut him now.”

 

She did not cry. There was steel beneath her surface now, one he had never seen in King’s Landing, but here in the North in her homeland, it was there. Years of her unfortunate situation no doubt shaped her to what she was, but Sandor knew the strength of Winterfell’s walls surrounding her and her childhood memories of this place helped to give her an iron will to withstand much thrown her way.

 

More than she deserved to withstand, in truth.

 

“He will know,” she whispered, and the tears came then to her eyes, but not for herself. Sandor realized that quick enough. Those tears were for her son. “He will kill Brandon if he even suspects—”

 

Sandor pushed himself up from his chair, the wooden legs scratching against the stone floor. He approached her, placing his hands upon her arms, and looked her directly in the eyes. “He won’t touch you. I’ll make sure of that. We’ll leave as I said, the three of us. Together as we should be, isn’t that right? I’ll take you east and make you my wife. I’ll do whatever it takes for you and the boy. Believe that.”

 

Sansa said nothing as she looked up at him, though her eyes glistened. When he leaned in to kiss her, he thought he tasted ash on her tongue.


	12. Kiss Me Once and I’ll Be Gone

 

“You should leave here as soon as possible,” Sansa said from the other end of the bed, and Sandor paused with his back halfway bent as he had reached down for his breeches lying on the floor. They had just spent their time together as usual in bed with one another, and afterwards, Sansa had remained in his room to relax within his embrace as she had always done before. Their moment of peace and solitude found in each other isolated them from the rest of the world beyond his room. It had been devoid of words so far, but Sandor had sensed a vulnerability more pronounced in her than normal, especially as her hands had caressed his face and her lips had pressed close to his to kiss him with tenderness.

 

Sandor straightened his back, turning to face her while still sitting on the bed. He thought maybe he had misheard her speak, but she was re-lacing her dress with an almost detached and methodical sureness. Her fingers worked carefully with the ribbons, and her eyes gave nothing away.

 

There had been no fear of getting her with child when she was already carrying one. Sansa’s belly was not showing yet. It was still too early, but it dried the back of his tongue to hear such words out of her mouth. Sansa could not have meant them. After all the trouble Sandor had gone through for her and for Brandon, she would not give up now. He would not have it.

 

Quickly, he slipped on his breeches and stood up from the bed. Sandor crossed around the foot of it to reach her. Without looking up at him, Sansa continued to lace her dress. Sandor took hold of her wrists to stop her, though his grip was not ungentle with her. She refused to look at him, so he let go of one of her hands to put his fingers beneath her chin and lift her eyes to his. He wanted her to look at him and say it if she meant it. None of this unable to meet his gaze while she told him she did not want him, did not care, and did not wish to leave.

 

The openness of Sansa’s earlier touch was present now in her eyes, and Sandor could see everything inside of them. Nothing was hidden from him.

 

“Look at me,” he said in a low voice, “and say that.”

 

Sandor ran his thumb over her cheek, and Sansa struggled to keep the look upon her face impassive, but she failed to do so. “Tyrion will kill you,” she whispered to him, her voice pained with each word spoken. “If you do not escape as soon as possible, he will know about us and he will kill you, Sandor.”

 

Sandor knelt on the floor in front of her, placing both of his hands on her knees. “Why do you say that?”

 

“He has become distant toward me,” Sansa revealed to him. “I have not come to him in so long. I feel eyes on me when I am not looking. I watch my steps, but I fear he will soon have spies to follow me.”

 

“We leave together,” Sandor told her. “I told you that.”

 

Sansa shook her head, biting down on her bottom lip. “I cannot leave with you, Sandor. I am too afraid of what will happen to my son, to Brandon, and the child I have not yet brought into this world.” As the last words escaped her lips, Sansa looked down at her stomach and covered it with her arms.

 

Sandor looked at her belly and at the arms she had wrapped protectively around their unborn child. Slowly, he leaned forward until his forehead pressed against her arms and against the fabric of her gown. He placed both of his hands upon her waist, holding her with care.

 

He would not leave without her. He would not leave without their son.

 

If she stayed, so would he.

 

“I’ll not abandon you to this den of lions,” Sandor spoke against her arms. “I’ll not abandon the boy or the babe.” He breathed out, his hot breath washing over her skin. Sansa shivered in response, and he pulled back as he felt her uncurl her arms from around her middle. She wound them about his shoulders, pulling him close to her gown. Sansa cradled him in her embrace as if he were a child and not a man, but Sandor found only comfort in the gesture. “You’ll come with me, them too, or I’ll not leave,” he said.

 

“I must think of my children—” she whispered, but he cut her off, pulling back from her arms.

 

“You think I don’t?” Sandor asked her.

 

She tilted her head to the side, a wounded expression on her face. “Of course you do,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek. Her thumb echoed his motion of earlier, caressing against the cheekbone on the good side of his face.

 

“You’ll leave with me,” Sandor repeated.

 

Sansa bit down harder on her lip. “Sandor, I—”

 

“You will leave with me,” he said again, leaning in close to her as he knelt before her. His lips were only a hair’s breadth away from hers.

 

“No,” she whispered, though she did not sound as adamant as she wished to.

 

“You will,” Sandor told her, and when he kissed her, she gave in with all of her heart to it. Sansa kissed him back, parting her lips to his and wrapping her arms more securely around his shoulders. He backed her onto the bed again, and just as soon as she had laced up her dress, he was pulling the laces free and hiking up the skirts of her dress to take her again upon the bed as before. Her legs wound around his hips, and her nails dragged along his back, and Sandor lost himself in the feel of her, the smell of her, and touch of her all around him.

 

When they were lying in the aftermath, chests heaving as they gulped down air in desperation, Sandor looked at her—her flushed cheeks, her bright eyes, her tussled locks of auburn hair thrown over his pillows, and he wondered how it had taken him so long to realize how important she was to him.

 

He had denied it for so long, turned his back on it until it was too painful for him to ignore for any longer.

 

He was not leaving Winterfell without her.

 

Time had gotten away from them, though. Sandor pushed himself up from the bed. Sansa had been in his room for too long. It was much longer than normal. They had to be quick about getting her back to her chambers unseen. He pulled on his clothes as she rose from the bed to do the same as well. When he was fully dressed, he went over to Sansa to help her with the laces on her gown again. She draped the dun brown cloak over her shoulders at last, pulling the hood over her head to hide her hair and face from view.

 

He took her by the arms again, and Sansa looked up at his face in confusion.

 

“You will,” Sandor simply said.

 

Sansa’s expression softened within her eyes, but she said nothing. In her silence he leaned forward to kiss her one last time before he pulled away from her and walked over to the door. He twisted the handle and pulled it open, stepping out into the hallway from his room. He always stepped out first to make sure things were safe before Sansa ventured beyond the threshold of his doorway. He would take no risks with her, and he never did. Each time as he checked the hallway, she stayed inside of his room, waiting for the way to be clear and safe.

 

They were not so lucky this time.

 

There was no one there when he checked the halls. Sandor had seen nothing. As he returned to the doorway of his room to extend his hand for her, she took it and stepped forward, and guards called out in the dark. Instinctively, he pushed Sansa back into the room and reached for the sword lying against the threshold of the doorway. Sandor yanked it from its scabbard and turned to face the men. To his good luck, there were only two of them and they fought like green boys. He cut them down easily, killing each of them. Quickly, his cleaned his blade of the blood and sheathed it in its scabbard.

 

When he turned to look at Sansa, she had backed herself further into his room than before, trembling from head to toe at what she had just witnessed in the hall. He leaned his sword against the wall beside the door and grabbed her arm, though not ungentle, and pulled her forward into the hallway.

 

“Go now,” Sandor urged her. “Get back to your room.”

 

“The bodies—” Sansa protested.

 

“I’ll take care of them. Don’t you worry.”

 

She gazed up at him, and though there appeared to be doubt in her eyes at first, she slowly nodded her head in agreement and accepted his answer. Before she left, Sansa reached up to hold his face as she placed a soft kiss against his lips as the bodies of the guards bled out on the floor below them.

 

As she hurried away into the darkness, Sandor glanced down at the mess he had to clean up.

 

He didn’t clean it up, though.

 

Sandor waited long enough for Sansa to return safely to her chambers and feign sleep before he marched down the hallways towards Lord Tyrion’s chambers. The best method to handle this was honesty mixed in with a little bit of a lie. He pounded his fist against the door to wake the little lord, and he was answered a moment later with a very disgruntled dwarf with sleep in his eyes.

 

“What is the _meaning_ of this?” Tyrion demanded, hardly imposing when he was only a few feet off of the ground and not sitting in his high chair.

 

“I could ask you the same damn thing,” Sandor snarled. “I awake in the night to find men at my door ready to kill me. _Your_ men. Two green boys now dead in my hall.”

 

Tyrion blinked at him, looking confused. “What do you mean?” he asked. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Clegane, and coming to my room in the middle of the night to wake me—”

 

“Come see them for yourself,” Sandor said, and the little lord stared at him with his beady eyes, glinting in the dark.

 

“Let me get dressed,” Tyrion finally answered him. “I will send for my advisors, and we will deal with this immediately, then.” However, the little lord did not seem happy about it, and Sandor noted a look of sudden look of suspicion deep in his eyes.

 

Sandor knew trying to hide the bodies would not have worked half so well as admitting to killing them. They were, after all, guards and soldiers. They would be found missing, and questions would be raised and investigations might start. The less warning signs he had hanging over his head, the better, and admitting to slaying two men with their swords drawn outside of his room was not near so bad as the other option of pretending to know nothing about it.

 

They cleaned the bodies away as one of Tyrion’s advisors prattled on about the men being upset at Sandor’s release. Ever since Lady Asha Greyjoy escaped and killed three of their comrades in the chase to recapture her, he said, the men had been looking for someone to blame and Sandor was the most reasonable target. The old man backed up Sandor’s story unwittingly, but Lord Tyrion’s green and black eyes regarded the scene still with suspicion in his gaze, though he did not speak on it.

 

Instead, the little lord merely nodded his head and turned away from the sight.

 

“Throw the rest of them in the dungeon again for a few days until they see things differently,” Lord Tyrion called out, turning away from the scene to hobble away down the corridors back to his room. “As my father once said, it will teach them some well-needed humility.” The little lord was distracted with more important matters than this. There was the threat of a Targaryen war on their doorstep. The dwarf was reserving his judgment for that more than for this scuffle amongst his men.

 

In the days that followed the event, Sandor kept his distance from Sansa to not raise suspicions any further. She did the same with him, though sometimes he would look up in a room to find her gaze on him and sometimes he would also gaze at her. It was not dangerous, but it was foolish, looking at each other like that in public where others might see the look in their eyes, but with the word _dragons_ on the air, little else seemed important anymore.

 

Sandor took part in Lord Tyrion’s counsel meetings to discuss siege plans against a possible attack from the south. When the dragons were brought up, though, the whole room fell silent.

 

“If we make siege preparations to stay in Winterfell,” one of his counselors said, “we may have another repeat of Harrenhal.”

 

“We must make preparations to evacuate the city,” another said. “We are not safe here if the dragons come—”

 

“And where will we be safe against dragons, Maester Colin?” Tyrion said from across the table, tilting his chin into his hand. “Out in the open snows? Will they protect us against the fire with their chill?”

 

The room had fallen silent again.

 

“We will make the siege preparations and consider treaty,” Lord Tyrion declared in a firm voice. “It will prove our best chance for survival.”

 

Though it was his own suggestion, even the little lord looked disquieted by the decision. The woman who called herself Daenerys of House Targaryen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, had burned his father alive in King’s Landing along with Tyrion’s nephew, Tommen, and his brother, Jaime Lannister. The little lord had shown no distress over the losses, but some part of it had bothered him. He was a Lannister as they were, and his chances of survival were probably about as good as theirs against the Targaryen queen.

 

If the little lord planned on locking them all under siege, then Sandor did not have much time to get himself, Sansa, and Brandon out of Winterfell before the hammer stroke fell.


	13. Truth Be Told, You Were Always a Bad Liar

 

“Brandon is yours,” Sansa murmured to him, wrapping her arm around his chest from behind as she leaned into his back. Sandor felt her rest her head against his back, her cheek pressed to his bare skin. Her hair fell over his shoulder, tickling him where he was not yet numb to touch. Some areas of his body had dead nerve endings from battle wounds and cuts that had once run too deep. Sandor could feel, of course, but there were places on his body that felt nothing. Even the tickle of her hair felt pleasant against his flesh, the flesh that could feel.

 

He had never expected to hear her say it out loud, even though he had suspected for a long time that the boy was his and not Tyrion’s seed. Sandor contemplated why now in this moment she had chosen to reveal it to him after hiding it for so long. Sansa had denied the boy’s possible parentage ever since he had found out about her pregnancy with the first child, saying she did not know whose child it was and then later claiming the boy belonged to the little lord, but his dark hair was the same shade as Sandor’s hair and his nose had the same small hook in it as Sandor’s nose.

 

“How do you know?” he finally asked, extending his hand upward to grasp her hand upon his chest. He entwined his fingers with hers, running his thumb along her knuckles. Sansa turned her head behind him, and Sandor felt her lips graze his back as she lifted her cheek from his skin. Her hair fell from his shoulder and slipped over his back, raising goose bumps along his arms.

 

“The Lannisters are known for having green eyes,” Sansa explained slowly, her voice barely above a whisper. “Tyrion has one that is black, though they say that is a matter of his deformity. Like my lady mother’s, mine are blue. My lord father had grey eyes. Grey is the common Stark color. He has my eyes, but he has not the golden blond of his father or the red of my hair. His hair is dark. Some say it is like my lord father’s hair,” she told him, lifting her hand to his hair and sliding her fingers through it, “but it’s darker like yours.”

 

His scalp tingled from the touch of her hand, and as her palm lowered and rested against his back again, he stared forward at the fire while the small flames rose. They twisted amongst the logs, swaying back and forth before his vision. His eyes blurred against the heat.

 

“The maesters say he will be monstrously tall,” Sansa added softly. “Like you.”

 

Sandor gripped her hand tighter.

 

“Why tell me this now?” he asked her, his voice a dry and quiet rasp.

 

Sansa was silent behind him at first, and she laid her cheek against his back again before she answered his question. “We will all die,” she said far too calmly than he expected of her. “I thought you should know you are his father before the end comes to us. I do not want to die with a lie upon my lips.”

 

Sandor did not let go of her hand, but he removed it from his chest. Sansa lifted her head from his back as he turned around on the bed to face her. Her hair fell in loose tresses about her shoulders, pushed over to one side of her face. He had had to see her tonight, even though it was risky for the both of them. Sansa’s eyes appeared taken aback as the sight of his face once he had turned around, though he did not think of why. Instead, he reached out for her face to touch her cheek, and she leaned into his hand and turned her head to kiss his palm.

 

“We can escape tonight,” he rasped. “I have everything ready. All you have to do is say the word, and we’ll go. I’ll get Brandon, and—”

 

Sansa slowly shook her head. “We won’t make it in the cold,” she said. “It’s too dangerous for me, and I won’t risk my baby—”

 

“If you stay,” Sandor ground out, “you and the babe _will_ die.”

 

“Tyrion has tried for treaty—”

 

“The treaty failed,” Sandor said, turning away from her. His hand fell from her cheek. “The Dragon Queen burned the letter once she read it, and she sent the scout back with blackened fingers for the hand that bore it. She won’t treaty with the little lord. She’ll burn Winterfell to the ground before she treats with him.”

 

Sansa fell quiet on the bed beside him. The fire crackled in the silence. Her hand reached out for his, trepid fingers intertwining with his calloused ones. Her skin was soft and delicate. They had not known work as his had known, and when she touched him, it felt like silk grazing his skin. Sandor reflected on how many people the Dragon Queen would burn in their beds before she was happy with her conquest. _They say she is mad_ , he thought. _As mad as Aerys before her_.

 

“I will bring Brandon with me,” she finally said, and Sandor turned to look at her face. “Not tonight, though. Tomorrow will be better. Let us sleep on it before we rush into the cold.”

 

“Tonight—”

 

“Tomorrow,” Sansa said firmly. “Where should I meet you?”

 

His jaw loosened its tight clench. “Meet me at the south entrance come nightfall,” Sandor told her. “I will be waiting there with a horse and supplies. We’ll ride out of Winterfell and head east to White Harbor. From there, we’ll take a ship. I’ve bought us passage already. We’ll have to hide your face. The boy’s, too.”

 

Sansa nodded in agreement. “Tomorrow, then,” she said, barely whispering the words. She leaned in to kiss him, an imperceptible softness he scarcely felt for the light brush of her lips to his own. As she pulled back slightly, he felt her breath on his mouth, and Sandor slipped his hand around the back of her head to pull her in closer and kiss her more deeply on the mouth.

 

He did not want to waste this moment between them. He wanted to remember it for the rest of his life.

 

Come the dawn, there was no sunlight to be seen. The sky seemed darker with a thicker cloud cover worse than the day before. Everything was dark grey, and a sullen quality had fallen over the occupants of the castle. It was not just the lack of sunlight or the turn in the weather, but also the news of what was occurring in the south. No one had any idea when or if an attack might occur, and no scouts had returned from the borders to herald an oncoming army.

 

Sandor attended to his duties as the day wore on, but three hours past midday, there was an inhuman, cold-blooded screech louder than anything Sandor had ever heard sounding through the walls of Winterfell. He froze in place where he stood, looking slowly upward at the ceiling as dread filled the pit in his stomach. Another screech filled the air, louder than the one before it, and Sandor heard the panic down the halls.

 

“Dragons!” one woman cried out, screaming and crying. “The dragons are here!”

 

More screams filled the halls, but Sandor ignored them and charged through the corridors to Sansa’s bedchambers in search of her. He found her not there, but he found Brandon crying in his room with his wet nurse as she attempted to calm him down, but she was crying, too.

 

“I will take him,” Sandor said gruffly, grasping the boy from her arms. “I know where his mother is.”

 

Having no reason to doubt him, the wet nurse nodded her head as she sobbed. Sandor tore out of the room with Brandon in one arm, the boy sitting upright on his own against Sandor’s chest as he cried with his fingers halfway in his mouth. Sandor didn’t care. He had to find Sansa.

 

There was a third screech filling the air, and then a _booming_ sound echoed within the walls and shook the very foundations beneath his feet. Sandor halted all of a sudden to grasp Brandon with both of his hands. He had no idea what had just happened, but he was willing to bet that Winterfell’s walls were now breached by the beasts from above. If the beasts were as strong as the legends claimed they were, then they could crack stone with just a single swing of their tails.

 

Sandor tore through the castle and past the crowds of screaming people, looking everywhere for Sansa, even as the ground continued to shake and further _booms_ echoed in the distance. He had trouble keeping his feet steady with the turbulent vibrations throughout the stone, and eventually, he turned down one of the halls and found it caved in ahead of him.

 

He turned back the way he had come, not knowing where to look for Sansa. She was nowhere to be found, but he couldn’t leave without her.

 

Coming back the opposite way led him to another dead end of caved rock, and that sent Sandor in a completely different direction through the castle. Brandon continued to cry. Only it seemed he cried harder now, not understanding what was going on and only knowing that it scared him. Sandor might have comforted the boy, but there was no time for it. Winterfell was caving in around him, and he had to get out of it or Brandon was going to die with him.

 

 _Sansa_ , Sandor thought one last time, glancing back at the ruinous hall, but just as he looked back, the hall lit up in sudden flame from above through the gaping hole in the roof. The roar of the fire transfixed him at first with fear, but Sandor quickly broke from his reverie and fled from the fire with Brandon in his arms as it soared down the hall and burned everything in its path.

 

He escaped out into the snows on the grounds of Winterfell, but there was no army within the walls. Sandor ran for the southward exit, knowing he wasn’t that far from it. He had tied up that damn horse not far from the door with its bags, but it would be just his luck if some bloody bugger had snatched the creature and ran off with it to escape the sudden attack upon the keep.

 

To his relief, the horse was still there. Sandor untied the rope from the post and mounted the creature. He had to hide Brandon beneath his cloak, though he still had to hold onto the boy with one arm. He whirled the beast around, calling out into the sky even as a large black shape loomed overhead through the grey clouds, wheeling about and screeching its inhumane song of vengeance.

 

“Sansa!” he called out as people poured from the castle, screaming and in terror. “ _Sansa!_ ”

 

Sandor rode the horse through the grounds of Winterfell, calling her name, but there was no answer. At last, one of the beasts from above collided its tail with a tower close to Sandor. The flying rocks and debris nearly hit him and the boy as they careened away just in time to avoid them, but he did not want to give up. He halted the horse for a brief moment, even if it was folly of him to do so.

 

“ _SANSA!_ ” he roared at the castle.

 

There was no answer, and Sandor sat there on the horse, dazed and lost as the babe in his arms. The boy wailed once loudly, getting Sandor’s attention, and when he looked down at Brandon’s tear-streaked face filled with confusion and terror, he knew he had to leave.

 

 _She’s dead_ , Sandor thought to himself, and although he did not sob like the boy in his arms, a small part of his heart that was still soft because of her hardened itself against the realization of her loss.

 

Gripping the reins hard in his one hand, Sandor drove the beast out of the gates of Winterfell.

 

Not once did he look back.


	14. Fancy Seeing You Here

 

The wind blew cold in the city, but the sun was warm in the sky above him as Sandor carried the basket back to his home. It was full of bred, vegetables, meats, and other things he had picked up from the market. A little boy ran at his heels, kicking pebbles down the street and giggling. Sandor glanced down at him. The boy, Brandon, was two years old now. He went by the name of Brandon Clegane. No one out here in this foreign land knew of the name Clegane, so it brought him no trouble to use it.

 

Brandon didn’t remember his time at Winterfell. He was too young to remember, but there were times when he asked Sandor where his mother was and why was she not with them. Sandor never had the strength to say she was dead. He had never seen the body, so he always told Brandon she was lost. They had lost her a long time ago when they were moving from their old home to here, he had told the boy. Brandon always frowned when he heard that, but he always said, “I hope we find her again one day.”

 

“I hope we find her, too,” Sandor would say to him, and then things would go back to normal again.

 

Brandon once told Sandor he remembered a lady with red hair who used to sing to him. Sandor had explained to Brandon that that was his mother. They talked about her often, but Sandor never used her name. Sansa’s name was well-known due to her highborn status, so Sandor never shared her name with the boy. Even here in this country, he did not want to come upon someone who knew of Sansa Stark. It would jeopardize Brandon’s safety and his, so Sandor remained silent on the issue, even if it pained him to keep it from the boy.

 

Brandon ran ahead of Sandor, still kicking pebbles along the cobblestones in the road. Brandon ran everywhere instead of walking. He did not like to sit still, and there were times when he could be a little devil of a child.

 

 _It’s in his blood_ , Sandor thought with an amused snort as he watched Brandon run with the stones across the road.

 

“Slow down!” Sandor called to him.

 

“Yes, father!” Brandon called back, skidding to a halt. He stopped on the road, but he didn’t look up. He kept pushing at pebbles gently with the toe of his shoe now, balancing himself with his arms held outward at his sides. Lifting up one of his legs, he called out, “Father, look! I’m a bird!”

 

It might have been funny, but all Sandor did was frown.

 

“Stop acting foolish,” Sandor said when he reached Brandon, but Brandon didn’t get upset or take it badly. The boy simply dropped his leg back down, lowering his arms, and walked alongside his father. He only did so for about five seconds, though, and then he tore off ahead of Sandor again.

 

Brandon liked to chase things, and Brandon liked to run. Brandon liked to climb things as well, and he also liked pretending he could fly. Sandor had caught him numerous times on top of the house, and he had to threaten to beat him just to get him down. Sandor never beat the boy, though, but he did smack him upside his head and make him do chores. Brandon hated chores, and sometimes he put up a good fuss, but Sandor always got him to do it.

 

Brandon ran further ahead of Sandor than he should have, but they were almost back to their home. There were a few people scattered in the area, and Brandon wasn’t watching where he was going, so he ran straight into a black robed man on the street, bounced off of the man, and then fell down onto his bottom on the cobblestones.

 

Sandor heard a baby somewhere nearby, making noises.

 

“Brandon!” Sandor called out in his rough voice, and the boy whipped his head back to look at him. Brandon looked forward again, scrambling to his feet as the man he had bumped into slowly turned around to glance down at Brandon. The man’s hands were folded in front of him, and when the man looked up, Sandor noticed his face immediately.

 

“Brandon, come here now!” Sandor hollered in the middle of his son’s apology to the other man, and Brandon whipped his head around again, frowning at his father. Sandor was already heading towards them, though, with a quicker pace to his feet than before. The contents in the basket shook, but the man in the black robe just smiled his coy little smile.

 

Brandon turned away from the man, running back to Sandor.

 

“Father, I was—”

 

“Don’t talk to him,” Sandor said in a low voice. “Get inside the house. Close the door and lock it. Don’t open it for anyone but me.”

 

“But, Father—”

 

“ _Now_ ,” Sandor growled, and Brandon jumped at the tone in Sandor’s voice. He hurried away from him to run into the house, slamming the door behind himself once he was inside. He was angry at Sandor, but his anger was worth it if it kept him safe. Sandor approached the man with slower steps, still holding the basket in one of his arms. He stared at the man, who was still smiling at him. Even with some poorly grown facial hair, Sandor recognized him. He would recognize that face anywhere.

 

“What do you want, Spider?” Sandor asked him, and Varys pursed his lips as he shook his head.

 

“That’s not the proper way to greet an old friend,” Varys commented.

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes. “We’re not old friends.”

 

“We were once,” Varys continued, undaunted. “In King’s Landing,” he added, raising his eyebrows and wrinkling his forehead as he tilted his head to the side. “How easily you throw away your friendships, Clegane. And here, I would have thought you remembered me fondly.”

 

“I don’t think fond of _insects_ ,” Sandor threw back at him, and the insult brought a frown to Varys’s face at last.

 

“Not even,” Varys said slowly, extending his open hands outward as he mused aloud, “insects that fly in with, say, a bird?”

 

Sandor was stunned, but he gritted his teeth hard against the memory. “What are you playing at?”

 

Varys looked surprised at the question. “Nothing,” he answered quickly. “I don’t play at games. You mistake me, Clegane.” Slowly, a smile curved itself along his lips. Varys took a careful step forward, opening his mouth before he spoke. “I heard a song,” he said in lower tones, “as a little bird flew out of the keep during the winter. She needed help, and so I gave it. I admit it took some time to find you, though we have been searching high and low. There are so many cities by the shore in Essos, but there are not as many people who use the name _Clegane_ beyond the Narrow Sea . . . ”

 

The words rang loudly in his ears, and Sandor heard the noises of the babe in the distance again. It brought back his memories of another child he might have had.

 

“You lie,” Sandor said to the man. “She’s dead.”

 

Varys frowned at Sandor, a sad look in his eyes. “Would that she knew that,” he replied, “then she might not have come so far on a lost journey.”

 

“Sandor . . . ” came a voice from beyond Varys, and Sandor felt his grip loosen on the basket in his arm. “Sandor . . . is it you?”

 

Varys looked behind himself, and then he stepped aside to give way to the two people both behind and in front of him. Sandor saw the faded black robe before he saw the face, and then he saw the wrapped bundle in the woman’s arms. His eyes rose higher, and then he saw her face. She reached up with one of her hands to pull back her hood, revealing a spill of auburn hair down her shoulders as she smiled at him from across the distance. She was walking then, heading towards him, holding the babe with both arms.

 

The basket fell out of Sandor’s arm, hitting the cobblestones beneath his feet.

 

“I thought you were dead,” he said, speaking out of a daze.

 

“I called to you,” Sansa told him, “but you didn’t hear me. I saw Brandon in your arms, and I knew he would be safe with you.” She smiled even brighter at him this time, but her eyes were glistening with tears. “I took a horse as you had planned for us to do, and I rode to White Harbor. It was there I met Varys, and I bought passage across the sea. He came with me, and helped me to settle here. I told him of our plan to escape back in Winterfell, and we searched for you here in Essos.”

 

Finally, Sansa looked down at the baby in her arms, her smile turning soft. “I had her a few months ago,” she whispered, stepping closer to Sandor. “Her name is Catelyn,” she said, “like my lady mother.”

 

Sandor stared at the babe in her arms, unable to believe his eyes. He reached out to touch Catelyn’s forehead, and the little girl wrinkled at his touch as if it tickled her, and she made a face at him.

 

“She’s beautiful,” he said quietly, not knowing what else to say.

 

Sansa looked up at him. “Was that . . . was that Brandon?” she asked.

 

“Yes,” Sandor told her immediately. “He has been asking for you ever since he could speak.”

 

“Did you . . . tell him . . . ”

 

“I told him you were lost,” Sandor murmured, “and that one day we would find you again.”

 

Sansa’s eyes welled up with tears that shone in the bright daylight. “Can we go inside,” she asked of him, her voice trembling, “and tell him I’ve been found?”

 

Slowly, Sandor slipped his arm around Sansa, his hand just behind her head, and pulled her close to him in a light hug without crushing the babe in her arms. He pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes as he heard Catelyn make a little squeal followed by a gurgling noise beneath them.

 

“Yes,” Sandor told her, letting out a heavy breath he had not known he had been holding in himself for over a year. “Let us tell him we have found you at last.”


End file.
